Many young girls from rural areas are sent to work as maids with well-off families in the cities. A large proportion of these are sexually abused. Others are shipped along the coast to work long, grinding hours in the cocoa plantations of Gabon and Cote d'Ivoire and the Etireno's human cargo would seem to fall into this category. Most of the slaves sent to these plantations are under 12 years old. They provide the ideal labour for their exploiting task masters.
Children work hard.
They do what they are told. They are easily frightened into submission. Cotonou in Benin, where the Etireno took on its cargo of child slaves, was a major port in the slave trade in centuries past. In those days, the powerful white colonial nations viciously exploited the Africans they stole from their homelands. Now Africans themselves are doing the exploitation but richer countries have a responsibility too.