Former Education Minister Obiageli Ezekwesili has urged African governments to enforce 18 years as the minimum legal age for marriage to protect girls from child marriage.
Ezekwesili, founder of Human Capital Africa, also calls on traditional and religious leaders to support efforts to end the practice, warning that it threatens girls’ education and Africa’s human capital development.
She makes the call in a statement marking the International Day of the Girl Child.
“A girl who learns is a girl who is not a bride,” she says, stressing the need to invest in girls’ rights and education.
Ezekwesili says 23.6 million women and girls in Nigeria were married before the age of 18, the highest number in West and Central Africa.
She cites Jigawa State as an example of the scale of the problem, saying 78% of women aged 20 to 49 were first married before 18, while 63% of women left school to marry.
“The cost of inaction is high,” she says, adding that child marriage undermines national development by reducing productivity and increasing health risks.
According to Ezekwesili, a report by Columbia University, which includes analysis by the Center for Global Development, estimates that child marriage could cost the global economy up to $175bn annually and almost $2.5tn by 2040.
She also warns that cuts to foreign aid, declining global commitment to women’s rights and rising conflicts could reverse progress in ending child marriage.
However, she says an estimated 68 million child marriages have been prevented over the past 25 years through girls’ education, legal reforms and social protection programmes.
Ezekwesili urges governments to strengthen legal protections, improve girls’ access to education and ensure that the minimum marriage age is enforced in every state and community.
“Enforce 18 as the minimum age of marriage in law and in practice, in every state and every community, with traditional and religious leaders as partners,” she says.
She further calls on African governments to increase domestic funding for programmes protecting girls, arguing that local budgets and philanthropy must fill gaps caused by shrinking foreign aid.
Ezekwesili also urges governments to monitor girls’ learning outcomes, transition to secondary school and child marriage rates as part of national accountability systems.
She says the African Union’s Decade of Accelerated Action for the Transformation of Education and Skills Development in Africa, covering 2025 to 2034, offers an opportunity to place girls’ education and retention at the centre of the continent’s development agenda.
