Breaking the silence in the cocoa fields: A virtual reality story from Nigeria

Across Nigeria’s cocoa-growing communities, many children face long hours of hazardous work that keeps them away from school and limits their opportunities. For girls, the burden can be even heavier, combining work in the fields with household responsibilities and lost chances to learn.

Breaking the Silence in the Cocoa Fields is an immersive VR film that brings viewers into the lives of two young women, Blessing Thomas and Obassey Divine, who experienced child labour in the cocoa sector. Through their own words, they describe the challenges they faced, the risks of hazardous work, and the sadness of watching other children go to school while they went to the farm.

Their stories also show what change can look like. With support from the ILO’s ACCEL Africa project in Nigeria, they were able to access skills training and begin building new futures in tailoring, hairdressing and small business. Today, their voices speak not only of hardship, but of resilience, dignity and possibility.

Funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and implemented by the International Labour Organization, ACCEL Africa works with communities to prevent and eliminate child labour, support children’s return to school, and help young people and families access safer, more sustainable livelihoods.

This institutional film complements the ILO’s 360-degree virtual reality (VR) film, “Breaking the Silence in the Cocoa Fields: A VR Story from Nigeria”, by bringing in the voices of the ILO, its constituents, partners and donor.

While the VR film tells the story of young people whose lives were transformed after being removed from hazardous work in cocoa farming, this companion film explains how that change was made possible. Through the ACCEL Africa project, the ILO is working in Nigeria with government, employers’ and workers’ organizations, communities, civil society and the Government of the Netherlands to address the root causes of child labour in supply chains.

The film highlights how the project is helping turn policy into community-level action, strengthen child labour monitoring systems, support children to return to school, promote responsible business conduct, and build the capacity of national and local actors to sustain progress. It also shows how the ILO’s tripartite approach is helping create lasting change for children, families and communities in Nigeria’s cocoa sector, using the voices of the people who are making it possible.

More about the ACCEL Africa Project

Funded by the The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, the ACCEL Africa Project has the overarching goal to accelerate the elimination of child labour in Africa, through targeted actions in the cocoa, cotton, coffee, tea and gold supply chains. It adopts an innovative systems-approach to tackling child labour that moves away from project-based downstream interventions towards strengthening existing systems that are critical to tackle root causes of child labour.