The story behind the story:
child slavery on Lake Volta.

Lake Volta stretches across much of eastern Ghana—a vast, still expanse of water created when the Akosombo Dam was built in the 1960s. Its flooded forests left submerged trees that snag fishing nets, and its fishing economy runs, in part, on the small hands of children sent down to free them. Some are there with their families. Many are not. They have been trafficked—handed over, sold, or lured away from home with the promise of school or a wage that never comes.

How many children

Reliable counts are difficult on a lake this size, but the estimates are sobering. The International Labour Organization has long estimated that some 20,000 children are caught in forced labor in the Lake Volta fishing industry.¹ More recent fieldwork suggests the problem remains entrenched: a 2022 study commissioned by the International Justice Mission found that an estimated 38% of children in communities around the lake are suspected to have been trafficked, with a further 45% suspected to be in exploitative child labor.² Of the children actually working on the southern lake’s waters, IJM assessed that 57.6% had been trafficked into forced labor.²

The work, and the danger

Children on the lake paddle boats, bail water, haul and mend nets, and—most dangerously—dive beneath the surface to free nets snagged on the drowned forest below. The U.S. State Department reports that traffickers exploit children as young as four, force boys into hazardous deep diving, and that many drown as a result.³ Days can run from before dawn until dusk; advocacy groups describe shifts of up to 17 hours with no pay, broken sleep and too little food.⁴

Control is maintained through violence,
threats, and the withholding of food.

That is how the State Department describes the mechanics of this slavery: not chains, but fear, isolation, and dependence on the very person exploiting you.³ One study found that, in the regions around the lake, the great majority of children in this labor had suffered abuse.⁵

How a child ends up on the water

The root of it is poverty, not malice. In poor fishing and farming communities, a family unable to feed every child may accept a small sum, or simply a promise of schooling and care, in exchange for sending a son or daughter away to work. Research in the Volta region found that most trafficked children were obtained from a parent or another relative, often for a modest payment, and frequently without the family fully understanding the conditions the child would face.⁵ The traffickers are sometimes strangers, sometimes acquaintances—occasionally relatives themselves.

Is it getting better?

Slowly, and unevenly. In its 2025 assessment, the U.S. State Department noted that observers report forced child labor on Lake Volta has decreased—though it cautioned that adult forced labor, including among migrant workers, appears to have risen in its place.³ Ghana’s Marine Police now run specialized patrols on the lake to identify and investigate trafficking cases,³ and the country has ratified the core international conventions against child labor—though enforcement remains the weak link.⁴

The clearest progress has come from rescue and reintegration. The International Organization for Migration reports having liberated and reintegrated more than 700 children from the lake since 2002,⁴ and Ghanaian NGOs continue to recover children, return them to school, and work with the communities and fishermen who once enslaved them.

What is being done—and how to help

Two organizations stand out in this story. Challenging Heights, founded in 2003 by James Kofi Annan, rescues trafficked children, runs a recovery shelter and school, and works to prevent trafficking at its source.⁴ The International Justice Mission partners with Ghanaian authorities to investigate cases, support survivors, and strengthen the justice system around the lake.⁶

The film Fisher of Kids exists to keep this story in front of people who can change it. If it moves you, the most direct thing you can do is support the people already doing the work—above all, Challenging Heights.