Africa

Damaturu, Yobe State, north-east of Nigeria. Credit: UN Women

By Zuzana Schwidrowski and Omolola Mary Lipede
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Feb 19 2026 (IPS)

Africa is home to approximately 160 million adolescent girls aged 10 to 19 (according to 2022 data by the United Nations Population Division). They embody the energy, creativity, and potential of the continent. It is undeniable that The Africa We Want, as envisioned in the African Union’s Agenda 2063, will not be realized without the full participation of this group which represents a key component of the continent’s current and future workforce.

Yet one of the most persistent obstacles to realizing this vision is the prevalence of child marriage and its devastating impact on the lives and welfare of Africa’s girls, and its negative impact on the economic potential of the continent.

Child marriage is one of the most underestimated structural constraints on Africa’s capacity to harness its demographic dividend.

Yet millions are being left behind

The statistics paint a concerning picture. According to the World Bank, four out of ten girls aged 15 to 19 in Africa (excluding North Africa) are not in school and not working, or are married or have children, compared to just slightly above one out of ten boys. On average, nearly one-third (32 percent) of young women (ages 15–24) are not in education, employment, or training (NEET), compared with 23 percent of boys in that age range (Figure 1).

In Africa, 130 million girls and women today were married before their 18th birthday, the highest incidence of globally (UNICEF, 2025). The prevalence of child marriage varies across the continent. Central and West Africa bear a disproportionate share of the global burden.

But even North Africa, with the lowest yet significant rate of child marriages, shows that this harmful practice persists across the continent (Figure 2). Moreover, nine out of ten countries with the highest incidence of child marriage are in Africa (Figure 3).

The data reflect the most recent available information for the period 2016-2023.

And economic costs are staggering

Child marriage is most frequently portrayed as a human rights violation or a social and health issue. It is. And indeed, complications from pregnancy and childbirth remain a leading cause of death for adolescent girls.

These tragic and most visible aspects, however, are only part of the story. Less visibly, but most frequently, child marriages are associated with early pregnancies and effectively exclude girls from education and formal economic participation at the very stage when investments in skills and learning yield the highest returns (Figures 4 and 5). Besides limiting individual futures, this practice thus has major economic implications for African countries and regions.

For African countries, as for some other developing countries, child marriage is a major unaddressed economic distortion. It distorts human capital accumulation and labor allocation, with economy-wide consequences for productivity and growth.

More specifically:

• Child marriage truncates education, limits skills acquisition, and impedes women’s participation in the formal labor markets
• Girls who marry early are far more likely to enter unpaid care work or low-productivity informal activities, with limited prospects for upward social mobility (Figure 6).
• Child marriage limits girls’ full integration into society by depriving them of their rights, identities, and agency. It creates dependency and stalls leadership potential.

The implications for Africa’s labor markets are particularly severe. Productive structural transformation requires a workforce that can move from low-productivity activities into higher value-added sectors, including manufacturing, modern services, and the digital economy.

When girls’ education and skills acquisition are cut short, the supply of skilled workers for these sectors is reduced. In turn, incentives of entrepreneurs to create and grow productive firms are curtailed. At the macro level, productivity growth, job creation in the formal sector, and diversification into high value-adding activities are diminished.

Economic costs of child marriages persist across generations. The practice is closely associated with early and high fertility, increased maternal morbidity and mortality, and poorer health and educational outcomes for children.

If unaddressed, these social outcomes lead to lower human capital (educational attainments and health) of the next generation, thus reducing labor productivity and innovation. Over time, they result in a persistent barrier to achieving fiscal sustainability, regional integration and inclusive growth.

These dynamics hamper Africa’s chances to seize demographic dividend. While the continent’s growing working-age population is viewed as a potential source of accelerated growth if accompanied by adequate investments in health, education, and job creation, child marriages are accompanied by reduced female employment in the formal sector (Figure 6).

Subsequently, productivity gains fall below potential and demographic opportunity risks becoming a demographic burden.

Despite the negative macroeconomic implications, child marriage is not included in the mainstream economic frameworks and discussions that inform macroeconomic planning and policies in Africa. It is typically addressed through social or legal interventions, while macroeconomic strategies, industrial policies, and fiscal frameworks proceed as if these aspects of human capital constraints were exogenous.

Such disconnect results in systematic underinvestment in one of the most binding constraints on Africa’s productive capacities.

Policymakers and the population at large need to rethink child marriage

From an economic perspective, the case for investing in girls is compelling. Analysis consistently shows that investments in girls’ education and health yield high returns, raising lifetime earnings, boosting productivity.

Under the ‘full gender equality scenario’, including closing gender gaps in education, employment, and decision-making could add up to a trillion USD to Africa’s GDP by 2043. Estimates also suggest that every dollar invested in adolescent girls’ health, education and empowerment can generate multiple dollar economic returns over time.

Translating evidence into effective policies will require a shift in approach — a one where ending child marriage is seen as a core component of Africa’s economic strategy. Indicators on adolescent girls’ education, employment, and unpaid care burdens should thus become an integral part of macroeconomic frameworks, labor market projections, and assessments of productive capacity.

Against this background, addressing the child marriage issue in Africa is a matter of economic necessity, given that successful Africa’s transformation requires unlocking the full productive potential of its population. This, in turn, demands sustained investment in girls as economic actors and not merely as beneficiaries of social programs.

Africa must finance Africa’s girls, and measures such as strengthened domestic resource mobilization, gender-responsive budgeting, and gender bonds could go a long way in this regard. Moreover, policymakers should view public spending aimed at reducing child marriages and supporting girls’ continued education as capital expenditure instead of pure social spending. This would help align fiscal frameworks with longer term growth targets.

Ending child marriage practice will not, on its own, ensure that Africa will reach its development goals. However, unless addressed, this structural barrier will continue to hamper productivity, competitiveness, and the delivery of the Agenda 2063.

Recognizing that ending child marriage is an economic as much as social imperative would be an important step forward. It would also place the girls’ empowerment where it belongs: at the center of Africa’s development strategy and its pursuit of inclusive and sustainable growth.

Zuzana Schwidrowski is the Director of Gender, Poverty and Social Policy Division at the ECA and Omolola Mary Lipede Fellow in the same Division.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The gunmen launched simultaneous assaults on multiple communities in a remote border district, officials say.

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Officers in Kano search cafes and restaurants every year during Ramadan looking for Muslims breaking the fast.

Officers in Kano search cafes and restaurants every year during Ramadan looking for Muslims breaking the fast.

Investigators call the recruitment a well-organised trafficking ring involving immigration staff and security agencies.

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The High Representative issued a statement on behalf of the EU on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2026/260 of 29 January 2026 concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia’s destabilising activities.

The High Representative issued a statement on behalf of the EU on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2026/260 of 29 January 2026 concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia’s destabilising activities.

Policing exhibit at the Museum of Weed. An IDPC report paints a picture of an increasingly punitive approach to drugs in some countries, but also highlights reforms. Credit: Bret Kavanaugh/Unsplash

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Feb 19 2026 (IPS)

Drug reform campaigners have called for an overhaul of global drug controls amid an increasingly complex and deadly drug situation in the world and as hardline anti-drug approaches are increasingly being used as cover for repression of civil society and human rights defenders.

A report released earlier this month by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) assessed progress made since the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs, widely viewed as a potential turning point in global drug policy.

It found that the promise of UNGASS remains largely unfulfilled – despite notable progress in some areas – and that punitive and prohibitionist approaches continue to dominate global drug control, despite their enormous human and financial cost.

“Punitive approaches [to drugs] are costing lives, undermining human rights and wasting public resources, while silencing the very communities that hold the solutions. This report shows why governments must move beyond rhetoric and commit to real structural reform,” Ann Fordham, IDPC Executive Director, said.

Advocates of drug policy reform have for decades pointed to evidence showing how hardline drug policies have completely failed.

The IDPC report documents how current prohibitive policies have, far from curbing drug markets, contributed to their massive expansion and diversification, while at the same time the number of people who use drugs continues to rise and is now estimated at 316 million worldwide – a 28 percent increase since 2016.

The group says repressive policies are also driving devastating and preventable harms. These include:  2.6 million drug use-related deaths between 2016 and 2021, with projections indicating further sharp increases since; mass incarceration – one in five people globally incarcerated are for drug offences – disproportionately affecting marginalised communities; over 150 countries report inadequate access to opioid pain relief due to overly restrictive controls on essential medicines;  expanding use of the death penalty for drug offences; and the displacement of illegal drug activities into remote and environmentally fragile regions, including Central America and the Amazon basin, as a result of interdiction and eradication efforts.

Despite this evidence, many countries continue to pursue hardline drug policies.

Fordham said this was because of “the vast vested interests in the status quo”.

“The prison industrial complex is a prime example of this. Our report documents that one in five people in prison are incarcerated for drugs globally, while evidence shows that this strategy has done nothing to reduce the scale of the illegal drug markets,” she told IPS.

The group has also highlighted a worrying return to prominence of ‘war on drugs’ rhetoric – popular in the 1970s and 1980s – which it says is increasingly being used to justify militarisation, repression and violations of international law, including the Trump Administration’s weaponising of ‘narco-terrorism’ narratives to legitimise extraterritorial force and roll back rights, health and development commitments enshrined in the UNGASS Outcome Document.

“Punitive and hard-on-drugs narratives serve other interests for populist leaders, with drug policies being used to scapegoat people who use drugs and other people involved in the illegal drug market for broader societal issues, including homelessness and increases in levels of violence.

“Drug control is also increasingly used to restrict civil society space by threatening or attacking civil society and community organisations promoting much-needed reforms and condemning their governments for egregious human rights violations,” said Fordham.

Other drug policy reform advocates and experts have said this trend has become increasingly evident in the last year.

“Over the last year, we can definitely see the emergence of some new [drug policy] trends. First of all, there has been a radical change of rhetoric and narratives under US President Donald Trump’s administration,” Anton Basenko, Executive Director of the International Network of People Who Use Drugs (INPUD), told IPS.

He also highlighted how governments are using drug policy as a cover for breaches of international law to further other political aims, citing the claim by the US administration that the recent abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro by US forces was connected to stopping illegal drugs from coming into America.

“Over the last year, there have been completely different narratives from leading countries [on drug policy], like the U.S. And of course, some countries politically are always looking to the U.S. and listening to what they are saying and they might try to replicate something similar politically, using America’s action as an example,” he said.

Other experts fear there is a real risk this could lead to a worsening of wider human rights problems in other countries.

“The shamelessness with which the US is now trampling on international law, using the war on drugs as cover for some of its most egregious violations, is deeply troubling. There is certainly a risk that it licenses other actors to be even more brazen in their abuses of international human rights law regarding drugs and more generally,” Steve Rolles, Senior Policy Analyst at the UK-based Transform Drug Policy Foundation, told IPS.

The IDPC report draws a set of conclusions emphasising the need for reform and modernisation of current UN drug control treaties as well as, among others, a reconfiguration of the global drug control system so that it is orientated on rights, health and development.

The group says this is especially important now as the United Nations prepares to implement system-wide reforms and an independent expert panel begins reviewing the international drug control regime, providing a rare opportunity to “correct course”.

But that call also comes at a time when, as the IDPC points out, the work of organisations which have been successful in driving drug policy reform, as well as the implementation of life-saving harm-reduction programmes, community advocacy and civil society are battling funding crises.

Cuts to foreign aid funding by major donor states, especially the US, over the last year have been devastating for civil society, including groups working  to combat HIV and help vulnerable communities, including drug users, around the world. Funding for harm reduction, which has historically been low, is now in crisis, campaigners say.

“In 2022, available harm reduction funding amounted to just 6% of the USD 2.7 billion needed annually. The Trump administration’s decision to halt funding for HIV and harm reduction in 2025 has turned the harm reduction funding crisis into a catastrophe,” said Fordham.

“State-funded and third-sector voluntary services are all feeling the pinch, and even services funded by philanthropy are seeing priorities shift towards emerging crises. Many services will struggle on as best they can, but inevitably there is a terrible cost when services proven to save lives are starved of funds or closed down,” added Rolles.

However, it is precisely because of these funding constraints that it is vital, IDPC argues, that its recommendations are taken on board by global policymakers.

“The funding constraints and current challenges faced by the UN and multilateralism more broadly make our recommendations all the more important. The current system is clearly outdated and harmful, only serving to undermine health, human rights, development, human security, and environment protection – all the key objectives that the UN was created to uphold in the first place,” said Fordham.

But while the IDPC report paints a picture of an increasingly punitive and prohibitive approach to drugs in some countries, it also highlights significant progress in the introduction of more progressive policies in a number of countries.

These include important policy shifts in many jurisdictions towards decriminalisation and the legal regulation of cannabis, both for medical and recreational purposes.

Hundreds of millions of people now live in jurisdictions where recreational cannabis is legal, with markets having been created in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The IDPC report also suggests a renewed interest in psychedelics may soon drive a new wave of regulatory innovation.

“Just over 10 years ago, nowhere in the world had legally regulated adult-use cannabis. Today more than 500 million people live in over 40 jurisdictions with some form of legally regulated adult access… for me, this demonstrates how reforms that seemed impossible just a few years ago are now being realised on every continent,” said Rolles.

He added that there had been “notable progress [on drug policy reform] across the last decade, including the continuing wave of cannabis reforms across the Americas, the EU and much of the world; the spread of innovative harm reduction in response to the opioid epidemic; progress on decriminalisation in other jurisdictions; and an increasingly sophisticated reform narrative gaining traction in high-level forums – including endorsements for reform, including regulation of all drugs”.

“An increase in jurisdictions legalising and regulating cannabis feels inevitable. There are strong movements and political support for change in a number of Latin American and European countries,” Rolles said.

These reforms were driven in large part by non-state and civil society organisations – those same organisations which are seeing their funding and the freedom to press their case increasingly shrinking in many states.

But drug policy reform advocates are not expecting progress to stop despite the challenges such groups face.

“Almost all of the [cannabis legal regulation] reform has been driven by civil society advocacy, rather than top-down leadership from governments. Just as with harm reduction and decriminalisation reforms over the past decades, civil society is showing the leadership where elected politicians so often fall down. This will doubtless continue to be the case going forward. This is the moment to step up the fight, not to cower in the face of rising authoritarianism,” said Rolles.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A UN Fact Finding mission issued the report after investigating the capture of el-Fasher by the Rapid Support Forces.

Fish Value Addition Workshop in Ivory Coast.

By Sidi Tiémoko Touré and Essam Yassin Mohammed
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Feb 19 2026 (IPS)

It is an indictment on the global food system that, despite having some of the richest and most endowed natural resources in the world and a burgeoning youth population, West Africa spends more than $2 billion a year importing aquatic foods to feed its people, almost half of which is spent by Côte d’Ivoire alone.

Fish has long been a cherished staple food in West African diets, providing around two-thirds of all animal protein and featuring in popular dishes such as the Ivorian classic, poisson braisé and Senegal’s thieboudienne.

Yet in recent years, the region’s fishing industry has struggled to meet demand with growing external pressures and threats. Some of the highest levels of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the world costs the region more than $9 billion annually, and increasing vulnerability to climate change is also impacting the sector.

These challenges to domestic production have coincided with a decline in fish consumption from more than 13kg per person a year in 2008 to just over 11.5kg in 2025, despite the ongoing popularity of fish and seafood.

From our perspective, Côte d’Ivoire, along with other West African countries, have enormous potential to embrace the investment rule to “fish where the fish are” and reclaim food sovereignty. Not only would a stronger domestic sector reduce the import bill, but it would also create much-needed jobs, especially for young people, as well as improving diets and food security by providing more highly nutritious fish and seafood.

In short, we believe that boosting homegrown aquaculture would allow West Africa to reap the full benefits of the blue economy.

To that end, Côte d’Ivoire is at the forefront of a transformative journey to get West Africa’s fishing industry back on course, setting an example for other countries.

To begin with, the country has launched an ambitious policy framework dedicated to growing the aquaculture sector, including inland fisheries, which extend the benefits beyond coastal communities.

The $25.6 million Project for the Development of Competitive Value Chains in Aquaculture and Sustainable Fisheries (ProDeCAP) focuses on improving marine, lagoon, and inland fisheries, increasing broodstock capacity, setting up commercial seed supply systems, and developing the fish feed industry. It aims to boost annual aquaculture production by 35,000 tons, adding to the country’s overall fish supply directly and indirectly benefiting around 700,000 people, around half of which are women.

Similarly, the Strategic Program for the Transformation of Aquaculture in Côte d’Ivoire (PSTACI) is focusing on four pillars to stimulate the domestic aquaculture sector. These include creating jobs, particularly for young people and in rural areas, as well as piloting innovations with demonstration projects to increase private investment, strengthening governance and boosting national capacities for supplying fishery products.

At the same time, Côte d’Ivoire will invest $3 million in a new Aquaculture Research Innovation Hub (ARIH), led by global research centre WorldFish. The hub, which will focus on improving feed, genetics and fish health, will help fill the gaps in research and innovation to modernise the sector.

The hub will bring WorldFish’s global expertise to West Africa, leveraging 50 years of innovation in small-scale fisheries and aquaculture. In 2023 alone, WorldFish developed 70 innovations, upskilled almost 120,000 small-scale fishers, farmers, extension officers, suppliers, students, and community workers, and facilitated the production of 436,600 tonnes of farmed fish using improved tools and technologies.

All of these efforts will help fast-track the growth of the sector and leapfrog the conventional trajectory of unsustainable practices by streamlining the adoption of best practices and proven technologies.

But beyond policy, research and innovation, the final piece of the puzzle is the development of the broader value chain to ensure every link that connects the sector is resilient and effective.

For this, Côte d’Ivoire and neighbouring countries need strong private sector partnerships to establish and grow reliable supplies of young fish as well as feed markets, processing infrastructure and sales platforms.

This element is crucial because in each of these stages lies untapped opportunities for new jobs and new sources of food and nutrition. The growth of the aquaculture sector is especially important for women, who can find diverse opportunities in processing and selling fish and other aquatic foods.

To extend the adage: teaching a man to fish might help feed him for a lifetime, but transforming an entire fishing and aquaculture sector will feed, nourish, employ and build resilience across a whole country.

West Africa has both the natural resources and demand for a thriving regional fishing industry. Strategic investments, policies and partnerships are now coming together to make this a reality, offering a swell of opportunities for others to come on board and ride the wave of Africa’s blue economy.

H.E. Sidi Tiémoko Touré, Minister of Animal Resources and Fisheries, Côte d’Ivoire
Dr. Essam Yassin Mohammed, Director General of WorldFish

IPS UN Bureau

 

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During winter in Britain fresh produce is sent by cargo ship from the West African nation every week.

During winter in Britain fresh produce is sent by cargo ship from the West African nation every week.

During winter in Britain fresh produce is sent by cargo ship from the West African nation every week.

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