• The Malala Fund will invest $50 million over five years to promote girls’ education
• Nigeria is a priority due to wide gaps in access to secondary school, especially in six states
• The initiative aims to help girls complete 12 years of free, quality education

The Malala Fund, an international organization that supports girls’ education, announced on Tuesday, June 24, a $50 million commitment over five years, with a special focus on Nigeria. The country faces some of the continent’s largest disparities in access to secondary education. The announcement was made by Nankwat Dakum, the organization’s communications lead in Nigeria.

Dakum said this strategy will support local groups, advocate for better education funding, and help girls complete 12 years of schooling, especially those affected by early marriage.

The program targets six states where educational inequalities are most severe: Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Kaduna, Kano, and Oyo. The initiative aims to help more girls complete at least 12 years of free, quality education, improving their employability and social inclusion.

According to UNICEF, girls’ net primary school attendance rates are as low as 47.7% in northeastern Nigeria and 47.3% in the northwest. Nearly half of all girls in these regions are not enrolled in school. The main barriers include poverty, insecurity, harmful social norms, and a lack of adequate school infrastructure.

Additional challenges come from restrictive social practices. A 2023 report by the NGO Girls Not Brides shows that 30.3% of Nigerian girls marry before the age of 18, and 12.3% before turning 15. These realities hinder their personal development and limit the country’s economic potential.

The program’s success will depend on close coordination among international partners, government bodies, and local actors, along with strong monitoring of results. Similar efforts, such as a project launched in Kenya in 2014 that built a secondary school in a rural area, have shown measurable impacts on school attendance.

For this initiative to achieve lasting results in Nigeria, access to vocational training must expand, and community engagement needs to be strengthened. Long-term impact will ultimately depend on consistent political will to make girls’ education a key development priority.