Let’s build the future with our girls as well

For a long time the means of curtailing child marriages by many governments in Africa and elsewhere has been talk, talk, talk and wishing away the problem. 

The scourge of child brides has stuck with us over the decades and, like a festering sore, it continues to torment us. 

Although everyone realises that it is a bad socio-cultural practice, action to eliminate it has not been intense enough.

If current United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) statistics are anything to go by, then more than 140 million girls worldwide are likely to become child brides by 2020.  

The International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) also notes that one-third of girls in the developing world are married before the age of 18, while one in nine are married before the age of 15.

These are worrying figures because victims of child marriages are always made to forego their education, thereby depriving them of opportunities to improve their lives and subseq