Former education minister Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili has called on African governments to prioritise girls’ education, enforce a minimum marriage age of 18 and strengthen efforts to eliminate child marriage across the continent.
In a statement marking the International Day of the Girl Child on Sunday, Ezekwesili, founder of Human Capital Africa, said foundational literacy and numeracy were essential to protecting girls from early marriage.
“A girl who learns is a girl who is not a bride,” she said.
She urged governments to ensure every girl acquires basic reading skills before the age of 10 and can progress to secondary school without financial barriers.
Citing UNICEF’s 2026 estimates, Ezekwesili noted that about one in five girls worldwide is married before 18, representing roughly 650 million women and girls alive today who were married as children. More than 12 million girls are married each year — about one every three seconds — with sub-Saharan Africa recording the highest prevalence at 31 percent.
In Nigeria, 23.6 million women and girls were married before 18, the highest number in West and Central Africa. In Jigawa State, 78 percent of women aged 20 to 49 were first married before 18, while 63 percent left school to marry, she said.
Child marriage carries major economic costs, Ezekwesili warned, referring to analysis in a Columbia University report. It drains up to $175 billion from the global economy annually through lost productivity and increased health risks, with cumulative losses potentially reaching almost $2.5 trillion by 2040.
“Child marriage is not a side issue in development. It drains a nation’s human capital directly,” she said.
Progress is possible, she noted, with an estimated 68 million child marriages averted over the past 25 years through girls’ education, legal reforms and social protection. Each additional year of secondary education reduces a girl’s likelihood of marrying before 18 by five percentage points or more.
“If every African girl completed secondary education, child marriage could be almost eliminated,” Ezekwesili said.
She stressed that 89 percent of children in sub-Saharan Africa experience learning poverty, unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10. Girls who struggle with basic literacy are more likely to drop out and become vulnerable to early marriage.
“That is why we say schooling is not learning. Foundational literacy and numeracy are the first and cheapest protection a girl has,” she said.
Ezekwesili called on governments to make foundational learning a child-protection priority, remove school fees that block secondary education, enforce the age-18 marriage threshold in every state and community, increase domestic funding for girls’ education as foreign aid declines, and work with traditional and religious leaders.
She also urged tracking and publication of data on girls’ learning outcomes, secondary school transition and child marriage rates.
“Africa can lead the way to that target, but only if we treat every girl’s classroom as the place where her childhood is protected,” she said. “Any girl-child should be a student, not a bride. She should learn, then lead.”
