Quote of the Day
“If real development is to take place, the people have to be involved.”
— Julius Nyerere
The Julius Nyerere archive traces these words to Uhuru na Maendeleo (Freedom and Development), published in 1973.
It is a short sentence, but it asks a question we often avoid.
Who gets to decide what people need?
A road can be built through a community without asking the people who use it where it should go. A programme can be designed for young people without ever putting a young person in the room. Officials can announce what a neighbourhood needs while the people living there have been saying something entirely different for years.
Then we call the result development.
Nyerere was asking us to look at it differently.
People are not simply recipients of development. They know things. The farmer knows what happens to that road when the rains come. The woman who walks kilometres for water knows what a new borehole would change. The teacher knows why children are disappearing from the classroom.
Expertise does not only sit behind an office desk.
Sometimes it is standing beside the problem.
Perhaps one of the simplest tests of a public decision should be this: Were the people who will live with it allowed to help shape it?
Quote source: Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere archive — Uhuru na Maendeleo quotation
Did You Know?
Nearly 3 in 10 young women in Cameroon were married before turning 18.
Child marriage can sound like a distant problem until we stop looking at the percentage and imagine the girl behind it.
According to UNICEF, Cameroon’s 2018 Demographic and Health Survey found that 29.8% of women aged 20–24 had been married before age 18. The practice was more common in Adamawa, East, Far North and North regions, and more prevalent in rural areas.
UNICEF’s current country data rounds the national figure to 30%.
But what can marriage at 16 or 17 actually change?
School, for one.
A girl who becomes a wife may suddenly be expected to run a household. Pregnancy may follow. Decisions about money, education and even her own movements may now involve an older spouse or family members.
UNICEF says child marriage is associated with interrupted education, social isolation, early pregnancy and increased vulnerability to domestic violence. Across West and Central Africa, the problem remains especially severe.
And sometimes the statistics acquire a name.
In 2025, UNICEF Cameroon told the story of Madinatou, who said she endured abuse, was forced into marriage at 17 and became a mother before later receiving support through a youth programme.
This is why ending child marriage is about more than changing the age written in a law.
A family must believe that keeping a daughter in school is worth more than marrying her early. A community must see her future as belonging to her too.
A girl does not become ready for adulthood simply because adults have made an adult decision for her.
Sources
- UNICEF Cameroon — Child protection and child-marriage data
- UNICEF Data — Cameroon indicators
- UNICEF Cameroon — Madinatou’s story
For discussion: What would make the greatest difference in communities where girls are still married early—law, education, economic support, changing attitudes, or some combination of them?
Continue the conversation in the Gender-Based Violence & Women’s Rights room →
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