Nestle to pay cocoa growers to keep kids in school

Last year a court in Ivory Coast sentenced 10 people to a decade in jail each for trafficking children to work on cocoa plantations.

The kids involved were released and returned home.

But child labor remains a huge problem in production of the crop across West Africa, with countries and businesses under pressure to do something.

Now Nestle is taking steps to clean up its sourcing of cocoa.

It buys hundreds of thousands of tons of the product to make everything from KitKat bars to Smarties.

The Swiss food giant says it will start paying growers cash if they keep kids in school, instead of putting them in the fields.

Monitors from a sustainable trade initiative and other third parties will check the children really are getting their studies.

Farmers will be able to get payments of up to $543 per year - or as much as a quarter of the average grower's annual income.

The scheme will be extended to all of Nestle's 160,000 cocoa farmers by 2030.

It's part of a push to make all its cocoa fully traceable with a few years.

Next year the firm will launch KitKat products made with cocoa produced under the project.

Nestle says they might be more expensive than the regular bars, but it thinks consumers will be ready to pay for a more ethical chocolate.