Minister Pushes Care Economy As Engine Of National Development

The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim has repositioned Nigeria’s care economy as a strategic catalyst for inclusive growth, social protection and national development.

The minister, who spoke at the 2026 National Caregivers Summit to mark the National Children’s Day in Abuja, said the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is pursuing a people-centred governance model under the Renewed Hope Agenda. He unveiled a policy-driven framework designed to strengthen families, protect vulnerable groups and create economic opportunities through structured caregiving systems nationwide.

She said the Renewed Hope Social Impact Intervention Programme was designed to ensure that social protection and human capital interventions reach across the 774 local government areas in the country.

She said: “This is a historic transition from viewing social development as charity to viewing it as a national economic imperative.

President Tinubu’s declaration of 2026 as the “Year of Families and Social Development” is a pointer to the government’s recognition of the family as “the first school of values, the first line of security and the foundational economic unit of society”, the minister said.

“By securing the home, we are securing the future of Nigeria,” she said.

“The ministry has embarked on institutional reforms to strengthen child protection systems and improve social inclusion mechanisms across the country,” Sulaiman-Ibrahim said.

“We have stepped up our efforts towards the full domestication and implementation of the Child Rights Act across the Federation and the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act to ensure stronger implementation,” she said.

“We already have National Costed Action Plans for some areas such as violence against children, child marriage and exploitation against women and girls with measurable targets, clear timelines and sustainable financing mechanisms,” the minister said.

She said the ministry was working with relevant agencies to leverage the Nigeria Education Data Infrastructure to digitise social development data and track vulnerabilities in real time to improve planning and response systems.

“We are using the Nigeria Education Data Infrastructure (NEDI) to digitalise social development data so that we can monitor in real-time educational gaps, vulnerabilities and exclusion indicators so that no Nigerian child or vulnerable household remains invisible in our development architecture,” she said.

The minister said that Nigeria’s fast-growing youth and elderly populations needed urgent investment in social infrastructure, pointing to demographic pressures on national care systems.

“We now have over 6.5 million Nigerians aged 65 years and older,” she said, adding that women and girls still bear the disproportionate burden of unpaid care responsibilities. “There is no country that can be sustainably prosperous if a large part of its productive population is held back by invisible and unrecognized care responsibilities,” she said.

The minister said the government was now “officially recognising that caregiving is not an invisible domestic obligation, but a vital professional sector deserving of structure, standards, investment and dignity.”

The ministry was scaling up nationwide training and certification programmes to professionalise caregiving services, through partnerships with stakeholders such as the Caregiver Nigeria Society, she said.

“We want to train thousands of Nigerian young people, giving them skills that are employable and relevant globally in the area of childcare, geriatric care, special needs support and community caregiving services. “Formalising the care sector is creating pathways for sustainable employment and at the same time allowing more women to actively participate in the economy.

The minister further highlighted the ongoing joint work with the World Bank on the AGILE Project aimed at expanding educational access and digital literacy for more than 8.6 million girls across 18 states.

“This is not just about education, it is about breaking cycles of poverty, fostering inclusion and equipping Nigerian girls to become leaders, innovators and contributors to national development in the digital age,” she stated.

The ministry, she said, is at an advanced stage of establishing dedicated institutional departments for the Care Economy and Women’s Climate Resilience and Adaptation in collaboration with the Ministries of Environment, Agriculture and Humanitarian Affairs.

Blessing Adesinyo, CEO, Caring in Africa, said the care economy was critical for workforce participation and economic growth.

“Care as infrastructure: a national imperative for growth,” she added.

Adesinyo quoted UN Women as saying that unpaid care work around the world, mostly done by women, was worth $11.7 trillion.

“Do the maths that is about 10 countries, the GDP of this country that women provide for free.

She said Nigeria is at a demographic and economic inflection point and is projected to be the world’s third most populous country after India and China.

“We add almost 10 million babies to our country every year. And for those 10 million we have no structure of how they will actually feed, educate and add value to our economy.” “We have 10 million people. Nigeria is growing year in year out.

Beatrice Eyong, the UN Women Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS said caregiving systems were critical to women’s participation in politics, careers and economic life.

“For a young woman who wants to get into a career, who wants to get into the economic space, who wants to get into political participation and representation, they need care,” she said.

Eyong said UN Women would continue to provide technical support to push Nigeria’s care economy agenda forward.

Godwin Chinedu Odo, speaking for the UNICEF Nigeria Country Director, reaffirmed the organisation’s commitment to work with the ministry to support care reforms and child protection systems.

UNICEF, he said, had contributed to the development of alternative care guidelines and implementation strategies that were guiding the provision of care services in Nigeria.

At UNICEF we believe the best place for a child is at home. “We would like to see children at home with their loved ones, and alternative care service provision only as a last resort,” he said.

The wife of the Minister of Defence, Oghogho Musa, described the summit as the right step to start with, coming at the right time.

“I want to congratulate the Honourable Minister for bringing this on board because it is really a big economy and so we are urging all of you to be part of this movement,” she said.

At the summit, the six-part book series, The Etiquette Adventure, authored by Etienying Akpan Usong of the Etiquette Africa Initiative was also unveiled.

The move was welcomed by stakeholders, who called for the swift implementation of reforms to empower families, protect children and unlock economic opportunities.