More than 20,000 children trapped in child labour on Volta Lake – CNN’s Freedom Project

CNN’s Freedom Project travels to Ghana's Lake Volta, where thousands of children are sold into slavery.

The team decided to learn why parents sell their children into slavery on Lake Volta, and also witness the heart-wrenching process of identifying and rescuing children in Ghana who are trapped in modern-day slavery

They also documented hazards and hardships faced by these children. However, prior to this adventure, the extent of forced labour on Lake Volta could only be normal

Children provide a cheap source of labour and their tiny fingers prove useful for picking the fish that are captured in the nets’ webbing, as the holes get increasingly smaller to catch smaller fish. Hence, children become a convenient tool for labour on the lake.

Despite death threats, activists continue the mission of bringing these kids better life because they somewhat believe that many children live outside the legal safeguards Ghana has established to protect a child

Child trafficking in the Lake Volta fishery of Ghana is one of the prominent issues receiving attention from various governments and civil society organizations in Africa. This is due to the adverse impact the situation has on the children’s development.



Lake Volta, one of the world’s largest man-made lakes, was created by the construction of Ghana’s Akosombo dam in the 1960s. Although the lake provided a bountiful supply of fish for many years, fish stocks have been declining in recent years, making it more difficult for fishermen to earn a living. Lake Volta is the largest reservoir by surface area in the world and it is estimated that the reservoir provides 90 percent of the national freshwater fish productions.