The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), in October this year (2018) released a list of 20 countries in the world with highest prevalence of child marriage. The report shows that Niger ranks first with a 76 per cent prevalence. Central African Republic comes in second with 68 per cent, Chad 67 per cent, Bangladesh 59 per cent, Burkina Faso 52 per cent, and Mali 52 per cent.
South Sudan has 52 per cent, Guinea 51 per cent, Mozambique 48 per cent, Somalia 45 per cent and Nigeria 43 per cent, are Malawi 42 per cent, Madagascar 41 per cent, Eritrea 41 per cent. The top 20 list also features: Ethiopia with 40 per cent, Uganda 40 per cent, Nepal 40 per cent, Sierra Leone 39 per cent, Democratic Republic of Congo 37 per cent and Mauritania 37 per cent. The report shows that close to 700 million women alive today were married as children, and 17 per cent of them or 125 million live in Africa. Kenya is grappling with high cases of teenage pregnancies, a scenario that forced the Education Cabinet Secretary, Dr Amina Mohammed, to form a team that is probing the cases.
