Child labour prevention in the coffee value chain in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

About this project

This Side Up (TSU Trade B.V.) is a Dutch social enterprise that imports speciality coffee from 15 origins around the world, striving to be a ‘good middleman’ and facilitate more direct connections between coffee producers and coffee roasters. Through its partnership with the Dutch non-governmental organization (NGO) Agriterra it has been connected to coffee cooperative RAEK in Eastern Congo.Coffee is traditionally an important source of revenues for rural families in Eastern Congo. However, the region is still being discovered by the speciality coffee industry. Impressed by the quality of the coffee, existing infrastructrure of RAEK, and special projects such as organic fertilisation and reforestation schemes, TSU has been importing RAEK’s coffee and promoting it to its clients since 2017.With high levels of poverty in the region, family sizes being large and most coffee fields remote and scattered, there is a high risk of child labour in the area. Thus, TSU, Agriterra and RAEK started a project to better understand and address child labour issues in the coffee value chain in Kabare. The baseline study was conducted for the first phase of the project in 2021. The study revealed that a significant number of children on surveyed RAEK member farms are in some form of child labour, on coffee as well as other crops. The majority of these children do unpaid work for their own families, with more boys are engaged in child labour than girls. At the same time, while nearly 79% of chi…

Published by

Netherlands Enterprise Agency · Government

Countries

Congo - Kinshasa

Sectors

Industrial crops/export crops

Funded by

Netherlands Enterprise Agency

Implemented by

Stichting Agriterra, TSU Trade B.V.

Accountable

Netherlands Enterprise Agency

Published by Netherlands Enterprise Agency to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), last updated 3 Jun 2026 and imported automatically. IATI identifier: NL-KVK-27378529-FBK20S02AB.

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