80 million child slaves in Africa

Around 80 million African children are forced to work in conditions of slavery, some as prostitutes or beggars, and the number will rise to 100 million by 2015.

The number of working children in Africa makes the continent the world's top child labour region, Tim De Meyer of the International Labour Organisation told the Pan-African Forum on the Future of Children, in Cairo.

Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, says 200,000 children are trafficked across West and Central African borders alone every year by smuggling rings preying on poor rural families' hopes of a better life for their children.

"Many of these children end up as victims of modern-day slavery or forced labour," one delegate said.

"They are deprived of food, basic medical care, denied wages, abused, beaten, raped, suffer from medical and physical trauma and many pay the ultimate price: death."