BIBIR GHANA_aboutUs

BIBIR GHANA and the kayaayei menace

Kayaayei is a trade often associated with children and adults from Northern Ghana comprising Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions, who migrate to the Southern sector of the country to engage in menial jobs i.e. carrying loads of goods and other stuff on their heads or backs from one place to another for pay.
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Some of these people, also work in chop-bars (local restaurants), hawk on the streets, assist market women in trading, act as shop assistants, fetching water for people, among others just to make ends meet.
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The practice has been in existence in Ghana for over three decades now, and children under the ages of 18 including adults as old as 45 years, indulge in that hand-to-mouth job for a living. Majority of these Kayaayei traders (80%) are females working in cities such as Accra, the nation`s capital and Kumasi in the Ashanti Region. While most of these Kayaayei traders are school dropouts, some too are people who have escaped from outmoded socio-cultural practices such as forced marriages, female genital mutilation (female circumcision), widowhood rites, among others to seek asylum in those cities.