Economy
Map
East Africa
Your Guides
Jambo! I’m Amina and this is my friend Kima. We’ll be your guides to East Africa, our home.
In rural parts of East Africa, like the Maasai Mara where I live, most people are subsistence farmers, which means they grow just enough food for their families. Sometimes they have a little bit left over to sell in the market. In our Maasai community, we are pastoral, which means we survive by raising animals like cows and goats.
…farming is their only work.
Most families don’t have the money to send their kids to school or buy medicine when they need it because subsistence farming is their only work.
Farming is also done on a large scale for profit in East Africa. Crops are harvested and sold within Africa or they’re sent to other parts of the world. In Kenya, 30 percent of the economy is made up by agriculture. In nearby Tanzania, it’s 60 percent. The biggest crops are coffee, sugar and cotton.
…many children are working on farms that grow coffee beans.
All over East Africa, many children are working on farms that grow coffee beans. This kind of farming is hard and the pay is very low. Some kids even work as slaves. I have met people my age who work on coffee farms here in Kenya. This kind of child labor is very common in my country, because people all over the world like coffee from Kenya, so it is in high demand. I feel sad for these kids because they don’t get to go to school.
Fair Trade Coffee
Around the world and especially in East Africa, people have started to ask for coffee that is made fairly. This kind of coffee is called “Fair Trade” and is made without hurting workers or the environment and without using child labor.