World Bank gives effort to end child marriage in Africa via Blog4Dev competition

Based on the 2018 World Bank Group Human Capital Index, the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa scored the lowest in skills, health, knowledge and resilience of all the world's regions. This reflects challenges such as high mortality and stunting rates including inadequate student learning outcomes.

The World Bank Africa Region has unveiled its Human Capital Plan with a noble objective to assist Sub-Saharan countries to combat these issues. The target also includes combating against child mortality, saving millions of lives, averting stunting among 11 million children, and increasing learning outcomes for girls and boys in school by 20 percent.

First launched in 2014 by the World Bank Kenya office, the Blog4Dev (#Blog4Dev) competition is an annual writing contest that invites every year young people to weigh in on a topic critical to the country's economic development.

"The adolescent fertility rate in Sub-Saharan Africa is 102 births per 1,000 girls—three times as high as in South Asia. This not only damaging for girls and their children, but it also hurts economic growth," Hafez Ghanem, World Bank Vice President for Africa opined. The plan also has an objective to empower women to prevent early marriage and pregnancy for adolescent girls.

The unfortunate truth is Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest prevalence of child marriage over the planet. Around 4 out of 10 young girls in the African continent were married before turning or within 18. These young girls are having their childhoods cut short, but this goes far beyond a moral issue. This situation has a negative impact on development. They are also more likely to have children at a young age, which affects their health, and they are much more likely to drop out of school and complete fewer years of education than expected. This will curb their capacity to enter the job market with adequate skills, and therefore reducing their potential for higher income.

Addressing the issue of child marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa is vital as this practice some 12 countries around USD 63 billion in lost earnings and human capital wealth.

The participants must be a citizen of and currently living in any of 48 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and be between 18 and 28 years of age on November 30, 2019 (the deadline). He or she should not be a winner of previous editions. The core topic is "What will it take to end child marriage in your country?"