Nine and looking after the family: the children working to survive in Malawi

As sole provider for his family, nine-year-old Gift is exhausted and, despite hopes of being a teacher, gets little chance to study

While other children play football or watch cartoons at home after school, nine-year-old Gift Phiri goes to work.

After his day at primary school in Mchengautuwa, in Malawi's northern city of Mzuzu, the nine-year-old goes home to start work, hammering sharp-edged metal sheets, shaping them into charcoal cooking stoves. Gift, who lives with his grandmother, two younger siblings and another relative, started making the stoves after being trained by his grandfather when he was six.