Nigeria, Oct. 12 -- A girl who learns is a girl who is not a bride. Today the world is asked to end child marriage and invest in girls' rights. I join that call wearing three hats: as a member of the advisory council behind Columbia University's report Accelerating Efforts to End Child Marriage; as Civil Society Representative on the Steering Committee of the African Union's Decade of Accelerated Action for the Transformation of Education and Skills Development in Africa (2025-2034); and as the leader of Human Capital Africa, an organisation that has spent years arguing that Africa's human capital crisis begins in the early-grade classroom.

The numbers are clear. UNICEF's 2026 estimates show that about one in five girls worldwide is marr...