By Rhona Afiemo, Programs Intern.

Before I started working at Connected Development, I had a picture in my head of what office life was supposed to look like. That picture was heavily influenced by the books I had read, the movies I had watched, and the series I had seen. In my imagination, an office was a serious place where everyone came in, sat at their desks, did their work, attended a few important meetings, and went home. Conversations would mostly be about work, relationships would remain strictly professional, and everyone would probably dress formally.

After watching The Office, Suits, and The Devil Wears Prada, I had different versions of that picture. Suits gave me the polished corporate environment where everyone seemed constantly busy, perfectly dressed, and ready to walk into a high-stakes meeting. The Devil Wears Prada showed an intense workplace where work could appear at any moment, and expectations were extremely high. Then there was The Office, which showed the other extreme: coworkers who knew almost everything about one another, joked around, formed friendships, and sometimes seemed to do everything except work.

When I started at CODE, I realised that real office life sits somewhere between all these versions and is somehow completely different from all of them. One of the first things I noticed was how wrong I was about the idea that an office would be strictly business. I expected to walk in, greet everyone, sit down, and focus on my responsibilities. I thought conversations would mostly sound like “Have you sent the email?” or “What’s the deadline?” Instead, people actually ask questions. How are you doing? Do you understand what you’re working on? Do you need help? What do you think? There is an openness to asking questions that I did not expect, and more importantly, there is space to ask them.

That was probably one of the biggest differences between my imagination and reality. I had expected an environment where I would have to figure things out quietly because everyone would be too busy with their own responsibilities. Instead, I found that people are generally willing to explain, listen, or point you in the right direction. It reminded me of The Office, but without the constant chaos. The people around you are not simply colleagues who happen to occupy the same building. They are people you interact with, learn from, and sometimes depend on.

Another thing I have come to understand is the difference between working collectively and working as a group. Everyone has their own responsibilities, projects, deadlines, and tasks. We are not all doing the same thing at the same time; sometimes everyone is focused on completely different work. Yet there is still a sense of being part of a group. Someone might need assistance with something, and another person will help. Someone might need a ride, and suddenly a colleague is helping them get home. A task may not technically belong to you, but if you can help, you do.

That is something I don’t think movies show very well. In Suits, people are constantly competing, negotiating, and trying to prove that they are the smartest person in the room. In The Devil Wears Prada, the workplace is portrayed as highly demanding and competitive. Real work environments can certainly have competition, but my experience has shown me that collaboration does not always mean everyone doing the same thing. Sometimes collaboration is simply being willing to help. It can be as small as answering a question, reviewing something, sharing information, or helping someone get home.

If there is one thing that The Office prepared me for, it was meetings. But even then, I underestimated how many meetings an actual workplace could have. There are meetings to discuss projects, meetings to plan activities, meetings to give updates, meetings to solve problems, meetings to discuss the meeting that just happened, and somehow there is always another meeting coming. Before joining the office, I imagined that most of the day would be spent quietly working at a desk. I now understand that working also means talking, planning, checking in, reporting, brainstorming, reviewing, and making decisions with other people.

Sometimes the work is the meeting. Other times, the meeting creates more work. And sometimes you are sitting in a meeting, wondering how something that sounded like a five-minute conversation became an hour-long discussion. Still, I have learned that meetings are not necessarily a distraction from work. They are often part of how work gets done, especially when several people have different responsibilities but need to move in the same direction.

I also expected office clothes to be much more formal. In my head, office life meant shirts, trousers, skirts, blazers, formal shoes, and looking like you were prepared to appear in Suits at any moment. Then I got to CODE. People dress according to their own style. There is no expectation that everyone should look like they are attending a corporate board meeting every morning, but there is still an understanding that you are coming to work. It is a balance between comfort, personality, and professionalism, and honestly, I appreciate that. It has made me realise that being professional is not necessarily about wearing a particular type of clothing. You can be comfortable, express yourself, and still understand that you are in a professional environment. So no, my office wardrobe does not look like Suits, and thankfully, I don’t have to dress as I work for Miranda Priestly either.

Another surprise has been the amount of team bonding. When I imagined office life, I thought of people finishing their work and leaving, maybe with an occasional end-of-year party thrown in. Instead, there are moments when people intentionally spend time together outside of simply completing work. There is conversation, laughter, activities, shared experiences, and opportunities to get to know people beyond their job titles. This is probably one of the biggest differences between the office I imagined and the office I have experienced. In movies, relationships between coworkers are often there to move the story forward: someone becomes the protagonist’s best friend, someone becomes the villain, someone becomes the love interest. In real life, relationships are less dramatic but perhaps more valuable. You slowly learn who people are, what they are good at, how they communicate, what makes them laugh, and how they work. There is no dramatic soundtrack playing in the background. It is just people getting to know people.

If The Devil Wears Prada taught me anything, it is that work can appear when you least expect it, and I did not necessarily expect that part to be as true in real life. There is a constant flow of work. You can finish one task and feel like you finally have room to breathe, only for something else to come in: an email, a message, a new request, a meeting, another task, a deadline. Suddenly, your carefully planned day looks completely different. What has surprised me most is that the workload does not always announce itself. Sometimes you can start the day knowing exactly what you want to accomplish, only to discover that the day has other plans. It is one of those things that movies dramatise, but real life does quietly and consistently. The difference is that in a movie, the unexpected task usually leads to an exciting plot; in real life, it usually just leads to a longer day.

If I had to identify the biggest difference between my expectations and my actual experience, it would be the people. I expected an office to be made up of professionals first and people second. Instead, I discovered that the people are what make the professional environment work. They ask questions. They answer questions. They help. They joke. They disagree. They collaborate. They have their own lives and responsibilities outside of work. They have good days and bad days. And sometimes, they will go out of their way to help someone even when it is not technically their responsibility. That has changed the way I think about office life.

Maybe I entered CODE expecting something closer to Suits: serious people, serious conversations, serious clothes, and serious work. What I found was something closer to a combination of The Office, Suits, and The Devil Wears Prada, except with considerably less dramatic music and a lot more teamwork. There is the professionalism of Suits, the humour and human connection of The Office, and the unpredictable workload of The Devil Wears Prada. But there is also something none of them completely captures: the ordinary kindness that exists in a real workplace.

Watching office-based movies and series gave me an idea of what I thought work would look like. They made offices seem either extremely corporate, extremely chaotic, extremely competitive, or all three. My experience at CODE has shown me that real office life is much more nuanced. It can be professional without being overly formal. It can be busy without being impersonal. People can have different responsibilities without becoming isolated from one another. And teamwork does not always mean everyone working on the same thing; sometimes it simply means knowing that there are people around you who are willing to help.

There are many, many meetings. There is an endless flow of work. There are unexpected tasks, deadlines, and responsibilities. But there is also laughter, team bonding, conversations, questions, support, and the occasional colleague willing to help you get home.

So if movies and books created my expectations of office life, CODE has given me the reality. And I have realised that maybe the best workplaces are not the ones that perfectly resemble the offices we see on screen. They are the ones where you can walk in knowing there is work to be done, while also knowing that there are people around you who will help you do it.

By Onyemaizu Fortune, Junior Data Analyst

Say the word COP to most people, and they picture the same scene: world leaders in sharp suits, ministers behind name plates, negotiators in vast halls making grand promises about climate change and climate finance. Cameras flash, statements are read, the world watches for a few days, and then it moves on. What almost nobody sees is everything that happens before anyone walks into that room. That is the part I got a glimpse of at a recent workshop on climate finance and COP negotiations, and it completely rewired how I think about the whole process.

I went in expecting to leave with a slightly better grasp of climate finance and how negotiations tend to play out. Instead, I was left with the uncomfortable realisation that I had been thinking about this all wrong. Negotiating at COP is not a moment. It is the tip of an iceberg built over months of quiet, unglamorous preparation. We picked apart what actually happened at the Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB64), traced the groundwork already underway for COP31, and spent real time on why climate finance keeps showing up as one of the thorniest items on every COP agenda.

Here is the part that stuck with me. You cannot stop a community from flooding, help a farmer adopt climate-smart practices, or get a village onto renewable energy with good intentions alone. Every single one of those efforts needs money and technology behind it. That is the whole reason climate finance keeps hijacking the conversation at COP. It is not a side issue. It is the issue underneath most of the other issues.

The most fun I had all day, and I mean this genuinely, was during the negotiation simulation. Reading about how climate negotiations work is one thing. Sitting down as the representative of a country bloc, trying to hold your ground while reading the room for what everyone else actually needs, is an entirely different sport. Every group at that table wanted what was best for its own bloc, understandably. Getting to an agreement anyway took patience, some strategic listening, and a willingness to give a little to get a little. It was messy. It was also the moment the whole workshop clicked for me.

Then the conversation turned to Nigeria, and the numbers landed differently once they were about home. Implementing Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC 3.0) between 2026 and 2035 is projected to cost $ 337 billion. Eighty percent of that is expected to come from climate finance raised abroad. Sit with that for a second. It means the outcome of negotiations happening in rooms Nigeria may or may not have real influence in will directly decide how much progress the country can make on climate-resilient agriculture, water security, healthcare, and more.

Suddenly, showing up prepared to those negotiations stops being a diplomatic nicety and becomes something closer to a national necessity. And the backdrop makes it even more urgent. Public climate finance is shrinking. Loans are replacing grants at a worrying pace. The gap between what climate-vulnerable countries need and what is actually on offer keeps widening. None of that is a reason for developing countries to walk into negotiations underprepared. If anything, it is the exact opposite.

This is not a new story for CODE. Our own research has been tracking this gap for years. In our State of Climate Finance in Nigeria report, produced with Oxfam Nigeria and INKA Consult, we found that Nigeria received just 4.9 billion dollars for climate-related projects between 2015 and 2021, a fraction of what the country actually needs. Our 2025 Annual Report pushed that picture into sharper focus, putting Nigeria’s annual climate finance gap at 177.7 billion dollars and showing that three-quarters of the finance the country did receive came as loans rather than grants. Sitting in that workshop, watching those same dynamics play out in a simulation, made the research feel less like a set of statistics and more like a warning we had already written ourselves.

Here is where it got personal for the work we do at CODE. Negotiations set the ceiling on what states commit to. Accountability decides whether any of that commitment ever reaches the people who actually need it. The communities dealing with floods, the households facing food insecurity, the people whose lives are shaped by decisions made in rooms they will never enter, they have no seat at that table. Yet they carry the weight of whatever gets decided there. That gap is exactly where civil society organisations step in, working to hold the line between what governments promise on a global stage and what actually shows up on the ground, through transparency, tracking of climate financing, real citizen involvement, and keeping an eye on how resources are spent. It is the same principle behind our Follow The Money work, where community monitors track public funds in real time, and behind projects like our Interfaith Dialogue on Climate Change, which brings faith communities into local climate action rather than leaving the conversation entirely to negotiators in distant conference halls.

So preparing negotiators and building strong accountability systems are not two separate jobs. They are two halves of the same job, and if there is one thing I am walking away with, it is this. The real work does not start at the negotiating table. It starts long before, in understanding what is actually at stake, learning to speak the language negotiations run on, building coalitions that can hold under pressure, and quietly training the negotiators who will represent us next.

With COP31 on the horizon, investing in people might be one of the smartest bets we make on climate right now. Negotiating skills alone will not fix the climate crisis. But it just might be what stands between Nigeria getting the partnerships and outcomes it needs and watching global promises stay exactly that: promises. Because in the end, nobody is going to remember how polished the conference halls looked. What will actually count is whether the people back home, in the flood zones and the drought-hit farms, ever felt the difference.

 Mining, health, and the children Northern Nigeria is leaving behind

By Hyeladzira James Mshelia  | Ag. CEO, Connected Development [CODE]

There is something particularly cruel about a crisis that starts underground and ends in a classroom or, more accurately, in the absence of one. In the mineral-rich states across northern Nigeria, from Zamfara to Bauchi, Plateau to Nasarawa, the extractive economy is doing what decades of underfunding and bad policy never quite managed to finish: it is pulling children out of school for good. This is not a far-off or theoretical problem. It is happening in backyards, in family compounds, in communities where the soil holds both a family’s last hope and a child’s undoing.

In Bauchi State’s mining communities, children as young as ten abandon classrooms for mining sites, toiling alongside adults extracting sand and breaking rocks under the scorching sun, hoping to scrape together enough for their families to survive. Bauchi had approximately 1.37 million out-of-school children in 2022, a staggering figure made worse by the fact that mining communities concentrate the worst of these numbers.

A family member of mine working in Jos, Plateau State, in the mining industry describes what he sees regularly across the Middle Belt. “It’s not so much a forced situation,” he said to me. “More of a family business, the kids helping their parents.” But support, in this case, is something sobering: children small enough to go down tight mine shafts that adults cannot enter.

Many of these families were farmers not long ago. However, banditry drove them off their land with nowhere to return to; the mine became the farm, and the children came with them. In Nasarawa State, for instance, a community of over five thousand people had just fifty children attending school on a regular school day,  such a shame!

The gendered aspects of this pattern merit particular attention, because when mothers join the mining workforce, girls are often withdrawn from school to perform domestic duties. And in some communities, adolescent girls are more vulnerable to exploitation and early marriage. On the other hand, boys are often directly recruited into artisanal mining as cheap labour. Both are a different kind of dispossession and both are almost completely invisible to policy.

The physical toll of mining on children is not separate from the education crisis, infact it is inseparable from it. Environmental degradation from mining activities leads to respiratory illnesses and waterborne diseases that directly affect school attendance and learning outcomes. A child coughing through the night does not sit upright in a classroom the next morning, more so, a child with stunted neurological development cannot be expected to sit an examination.

On government intervention, my source in Jos is blunt: “The law is one thing. Enforcement is another.” Existing frameworks for regulating artisanal mining exist on paper, but in remote communities where mining happens sporadically and out of sight, effective government presence remains to be seen.

Nowhere is this truth more devastatingly illustrated than in Zamfara State, where the world witnessed what has since been described as the worst outbreak of lead poisoning in recorded history. In 2010, hundreds of children in and around Bagega village in northern Nigeria began to fall seriously ill. They suffered seizures, blindness, and in many cases, never recovered. A Médecins Sans Frontières investigation later traced the cause to informal gold mining activities where gold-bearing ore was mixed with lead. The low-tech extraction methods released toxic lead dust into the air, which miners unknowingly carried into their homes on clothing and skin, exposing entire families.

Testing of children under five in the affected communities showed that over 90% had blood lead levels far above emergency intervention thresholds. More than 400 children are estimated to have died as a result of the outbreak. Lead poisoning in early childhood causes irreversible harm. It damages the brain and nervous system, disrupting cognitive development, learning ability, and long-term health. Many of the children who survived were left with lifelong impairments that affected how they learn, grow, and function.

The Bagega crisis revealed what happens when environmental damage, weak regulation, and poverty collide: children bear the greatest burden, not just in lives lost, but in futures permanently altered.

It also became a turning point for Connected Development. By early 2013, national attention had begun to shift elsewhere, but promised remediation funds were still not reaching Bagega, despite federal approval. In response, CODE started the #SaveBagega campaign, leveraging open data, social media, and civic engagement to refocus national attention on the crisis. The campaign brought forward community evidence, elevated the voices of affected families, and helped re-ignite urgency around government commitments and the release of the $5.3 million needed for remediation. It reached more than a million people and contributed to government action, including the release of funds for environmental cleanup and basic social infrastructure in affected communities.

CODE continued to follow up through field monitoring to ensure the work was actually done. Cleanup had been completed by mid-2014, and more than 1,000 children had been screened and entered into treatment programs. This experience inspired the establishment of Follow The Money, a citizen-led accountability movement tracking public funds and service delivery across Africa. It’s a simple, but powerful lesson at the core of the report: when accountability breaks down, people pay the price, and it’s always better to prevent than to respond.

What Does This Demand of Us?

Bagega was no isolated event. Children as young as six years old are still being reported to work in hazardous mining conditions across states including Nasarawa, Kebbi and Plateau. The crisis is ongoing, diffuse and chronically underfunded, partly because mining communities are at the confluence of every crisis Nigeria has failed to fix: insecurity, unemployment, poor infrastructure for education and absent social protection.

If mining revenues were equitably distributed in infrastructure, in education funding and in local development then many families would not have to rely on child labour in the mines. But accountability is the bedrock of fair distribution, and it requires the kind of community-led tracking that Follow The Money was designed to provide.

What #SaveBagega proved is that data used with courage and community can move a government that might otherwise turn a blind eye. The question today is whether we are ready to bring that same energy not only to clean-up but to prevention: to the school infrastructure, social protection, and governance frameworks that mean the next Bagega never happens at all.

Hyeladzira James Mshelia

Ag. Chief Executive, Connected Development [CODE]

Connected Development (CODE) runs Follow The Money, Nigeria’s leading citizen-led accountability initiative, tracking government spending in underserved communities across Africa.

by Chinedu Emmanuel Oda

A dispatch from the African Social Impact Summit 2026

I want to be honest about something: when I landed in Lagos for the African Social Impact Summit (ASIS) 2026, I was not expecting to be unsettled. I have sat through my share of post-development conferences, and they usually confirm what I already know, just with better slide decks. ASIS 2026 was different. The numbers on the screen described the exact world I work in every day, and the picture they painted was uncomfortable.

Here is the dive. Global Overseas Development Assistance, the grant funding that has sustained civil society work across Africa for decades, has contracted by 23.1% over the preceding cycle. At the same time, the annual gap to fund the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa alone stands at $2.5 trillion. Yet over $300 trillion sits in private capital markets, largely untouched by development finance. The problem is not that the money doesn’t exist. It’s that no one has yet built the bridge between that capital and the communities that need it most.

CODE has been building that bridge for over fourteen years. We just haven’t been calling it that. For most of CODE’s history, our funding has operated on what the Summit called “activity financing.” A donor asks us to run community monitoring workshops; we run them, count attendance, submit reports, and the grant closes. That model is ending, not because our work is poor, but because the institutions controlling development capital are now asking a fundamentally different question. Not “what did you do?” but “what actually changed, can you prove it, and can you improve it?”

Under the emerging impact-financing model, donors and private investors only release payment after an Independent Verification Agent (IVA) confirms that promised outcomes actually occurred on the ground. No verified outcome, no payment. The IVA is not a supporting role in this structure; it is the mechanism the entire system depends on.

Here is what struck me sitting in that conference hall: CODE has been doing IVA work for years. We have simply never packaged it as such. Take our Girls’ Education Project in Bauchi, one of Nigeria’s most educationally disadvantaged states, where over a million girls are out of school. We don’t just run girls’ mentorship programmes. We track education budgets through the State Education Accounts model, monitor school infrastructure through community champions across four LGAs, and independently verify whether money allocated for classrooms actually produced classrooms. That is outcome verification. That is IVA work.

Consider also our role on AGILE (Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment), which operates across multiple states. We serve as Third-Party Monitor: our dedicated monitors, including civil engineers, independently assess the construction quality of school buildings, audit Conditional Cash Transfers, and verify that life-skills delivery happened as promised. Again, IVA work, simply not labelled as such.

Then there is Follow The Money. Since 2012, our iFTM platform has tracked more than $500 million in public funds across all 36 Nigerian states, and 12 African countries, with over 9,000 active community monitors documenting what they find in real time. In Kaduna alone, FTM monitoring directly contributed to the delivery of $1.5 million in education infrastructure that had been budgeted but never built. Follow The Money is an IVA methodology. We have simply never priced it as one.

One session that didn’t get enough attention outside the room was the presentation on the Public Sector Performance Index (PSPI) and its state governance rankings. The core argument was pointed: governance performance is not about what a state has, but about how well it uses what it has. A state with a modest budget that deploys it transparently outranks a resource-rich state that does not.

PSPI ranks Nigeria’s 36 states and the FCT across five criteria: citizen satisfaction, revenue self-reliance, debt sustainability, revenue mobilisation, and transparency. One finding landed hardest in the room: as of the 2026 report, only 14 of Nigeria’s 36 states had publicly released their 2025 audited accounts. Among the non-compliant states is the FCT, the seat of the Federal Government, alongside Rivers State, one of the country’s wealthiest. If those two cannot meet this basic standard, the picture elsewhere is considerably worse.

For our Follow The Money work, this matters immediately. PSPI’s rankings tell us which states have the widest gap between resources and delivery, while FTM tells us what is actually happening on the ground in those same communities. Together, the two close an accountability loop that neither can close alone.

On my flight back, I kept thinking about the girls in Bauchi whose school roof we helped get fixed because a community monitor noticed the contractor hadn’t returned after the first payment. That is not an abstract development outcome. Those are children who now go to school when it rains.

The question ASIS 2026 forced me to confront is this: five years from now, will the financial structures that fund this kind of work still exist in the form we know? Or will we have been bold enough to build the ones that replace them?

CODE has the networks, the credibility, and the methodology. What the shift to impact financing asks of us now is the courage to name what we already do, and charge for it.

On the emotional and reactive cost of conflict, and what I am still learning about leading through it

By Hyeladzira James Mshelia, Ag. Chief Executive, Connected Development [CODE]

No one really tells you, before you step into a leadership role, how much time you will spend dealing with conflict that has very little to do with the work itself.

And do not get me wrong, some of it is serious. Perhaps someone keeps missing deadlines, and every time there is a reason for it. Maybe there was a delay upstream, or they are still waiting for approval, or something unexpected came up. And when you look at each explanation on its own, it can sound completely fair.

But when it keeps happening over months, it starts to look less like bad luck and more like a pattern. That is when the conversation changes. It is no longer an informal check-in about what went wrong. You are documenting concerns, gathering the facts, and preparing for formal action if things do not improve. And honestly, that whole process carries weight, especially when you are already trying to manage everything else the role is asking of you.

And that, at least, is the kind of conflict that makes sense to spend time on.

The other kind is smaller, but in some ways, it can be even more draining. Two people who cannot seem to work well together. Someone feels slighted in a meeting, and then the tension somehow lasts long after the meeting is over. One person quietly tells you what another person said about them, and suddenly you are in the middle of something that has very little to do with the actual work.

And in those moments, I often catch myself thinking, this is not what I signed up to lead. I did not take on this role to spend my mornings mediating disputes between capable adults who should, at least in theory, be able to work things out themselves. I used to feel almost embarrassed admitting that. I thought that if I found office politics draining, then maybe I was not cut out for leadership. But I do not believe that anymore.

The conflict nobody prepares you for

Most leadership writing prepares you for the big conflicts: a disagreement in the boardroom, a funder deciding to leave, or a crisis becoming public. And those situations are real, so they do deserve preparation.

But a lot of the conflict that takes up your time as a leader is much smaller. It is someone missing a deadline and having a reason for it again. Or it is two people having a personal disagreement that starts affecting a meeting that should be focused on the work. And sometimes, it is spending an hour trying to sort out a problem you did not create and would not have chosen to deal with.

I have fortunately never had to manage a conflict that became public or affected our reputation. But within a team, these kinds of issues can come up often. Some are important and need proper attention, while others are small but still take up more time and energy than they should.

None of it comes without a cost. When there is unresolved tension between colleagues, it does not stay between just those two people. It can affect how people feel about coming to work, how well they work together, and whether talented people start to feel like the environment is no longer worth the stress. And every hour a leader spends trying to resolve a personal dispute is an hour the team is not spending on the work it is there to do. You will not always see that cost on a balance sheet, but it is real.

The part people mistake for weakness

If there is one thing I have always known about myself, it is that I read people well. I pay close attention to emotions, both my own and those of the people around me, and I have learned to rely on that just as much as I rely on a strategy document or a KPI.

And for what it is worth, I am a Libra. So I have always been drawn to balance. I do not function well in unresolved conflict. It unsettles me in a way that most other pressures at work do not. For a long time, I thought that meant I was the wrong kind of leader for difficult moments. And I have seen people mistake it for weakness. They assume that because I do not enjoy confrontation, I cannot hold my ground.

But that has not been true. My discomfort with conflict has not stopped me from dealing with it. If anything, it has made me more aware of it early. I notice when a disagreement is starting to build, and I can often read the room before things become more difficult. I try to find a way forward that allows people to leave the conversation with their dignity intact. What people do not always see is how much thought goes into those conversations. Before I have one, I am usually thinking about what the person needs to hear, how I need to say it, and what outcome will actually resolve the issue instead of just delaying it.

That does not mean conflict comes naturally to me. It takes effort, and it can leave me drained, even when that does not show on the outside.

“My discomfort with conflict has not stopped me from dealing with it. If anything, it has made me more aware of it early.”

Is this a skill you are born with?

Some of it is probably temperament. But I think most of it is built over time.

I used to assume that leaders who handled conflict well were just naturally calm. Like it was something you either had or did not have. But I see it differently now. It is a skill you build by having difficult conversations, usually before you feel fully ready and often when you would rather not have to.

What has actually helped

The biggest shift for me has been learning to be intentional instead of reactive.

Being emotionally aware does not mean you have to act on the first emotion you feel. And for a long time, I did not fully understand the difference. When someone lets you down or you feel they have treated you unfairly, your first instinct can be to respond immediately.

I have had moments where I wanted to make a decision on the spot, like docking someone’s pay, before I had properly checked what was fair, lawful, or proportionate. Now, I pause. I check the relevant policy, consider the legal position where necessary, and sometimes use an AI tool to help me think through the situation before I make a decision I cannot take back. That pause between feeling something and acting on it has saved me from decisions I would probably have regretted.

The second thing that has helped is separating the person from the pattern. It is easy to get frustrated when someone keeps offering explanations. But it is more useful to look at the facts and ask a simple question: is this a one-off issue, or is it a pattern that needs a fair and documented process?

Photo: ©CODE/Peace Ita

Once I stopped taking these things personally and started looking at the record, the difficult decisions became less about my frustration and more about what the situation actually showed. And when it comes to conflict between colleagues, I have had to accept that I cannot, and should not, resolve every disagreement myself. Some situations need a short, direct conversation. Others need me to say clearly that I will not mediate and that the people involved need to work it out themselves. Learning the difference has given me back time for the parts of the role that actually need my judgement.

Earlier in my career, I would carry these conversations home with me. I would replay what I said, question my tone, and wonder whether I handled it well enough. That has not disappeared completely. But now I am better at making the decision, communicating it clearly, and letting the matter close once it has been addressed.

For anyone in this seat who did not expect to be here

If you never imagined yourself being the person who settles disagreements among your own team, and there are still days when the role feels bigger than you, I do not think that means you are not suited to it.

I think it means you are growing into the role as you do it, without a manual. No one really gives you a guide for this part of leadership. You just deal with it often enough that, over time, it stops catching you off guard.

A few things I would tell someone starting out in this kind of role:

1. A meaningful part of your week will go towards conflict that no one warned you about. It helps to expect it and plan for it mentally.
2. Small disagreements between people can sometimes take more energy than the bigger and more visible problems. Do not be surprised when that happens.
3. Feeling uncomfortable with conflict does not mean you cannot handle it. Do not let other people, or your own doubts, convince you otherwise.
4. This is not a skill you either naturally have or do not have. You build it over time, usually under pressure and before you feel ready.
5. Look at the pattern, not only the explanation in front of you.
6. You cannot mediate every disagreement between people on your team. Trying to do that will exhaust you and will not always solve the problem.
7. Feeling drained by this work does not mean you are failing. It often just means you are taking the situation seriously.

None of this is why I do the work. I did not take on this role because I wanted to become good at managing conflict. Most days, I would still rather spend that energy on the mission itself. But I have made peace with the fact that helping a team stay focused on that mission is part of leading well. The conflict is not the job. But protecting the space for the real work to happen is.

About the author

Hyeladzira James Mshelia is the Acting Chief Executive of Connected Development (CODE), where she provides strategic leadership and organisational oversight to ensure effective delivery of CODE’s mission of promoting social accountability, gender equality, and environmental justice across Africa. She leads strategic planning, guides programme implementation, and strengthens systems that advance transparency, learning, and impact.

Hyeladzira also drives high-level donor and partner engagement, representing CODE on national and international platforms to shape conversations on gender, climate, and governance. She fosters a culture of ethical leadership, collaboration, and accountability within the organisation.

Job Description
State Field Officers

Locations: Wamakko, Kware, Bodinga, Sokoto South, Sokoto North, Yabo and Wurno LGAs of Sokoto State

Reports to: Project Lead

Organizational Background

Connected Development [CODE] is Africa’s leading civil society organization whose mission is to empower marginalized communities in Africa. We strengthen local communities by creating platforms for dialogue, enabling informed debate, and building capacities of citizens on how to hold their government accountable through the Follow The Money project. CODE provides marginalized and vulnerable communities with resources to amplify their voices with independence and integrity while providing the communities with information that ushers social and economic progress. To enhance effective democratic governance and accountability, CODE creates platforms [mobile and web technologies] that close the feedback loop between citizens and the government. With global expertise and reach, we focus on community outreach, influencing policies, practices, and knowledge mobilization. 

About S-TRACE Project

The Sokoto Tracking and Accountability for Equitable Immunization (S TRACE) Project is an accountability and community engagement initiative designed to improve equitable access to routine immunization services across Sokoto State. The project strengthens transparency, citizen participation, and evidence-based advocacy to address persistent barriers to immunization, particularly among underserved and hard-to-reach communities.

The project works closely with government institutions, health facilities, community leaders, community-based organizations, and community volunteers to monitor immunization service delivery, track the availability of vaccines and essential commodities, document community-level challenges, and promote timely action by relevant authorities. Through community feedback mechanisms, social accountability platforms, and data-driven advocacy, the project seeks to improve the quality, accessibility, and responsiveness of immunization services.

S TRACE also supports the collection and analysis of field-level data to generate evidence for decision-making, facilitates stakeholder engagement at community and local government levels, and promotes collaboration between citizens and public institutions to strengthen health system accountability. The project contributes to increasing immunization coverage, reducing the number of zero-dose and underimmunized children, and ensuring that every eligible child has equitable access to life-saving vaccines.

Specific duties:

• 1. Conduct routine field monitoring of immunization services across assigned LGAs, wards, health facilities, and communities to assess service quality, accessibility, and equity.
  2. Collect, verify, and submit accurate field data using approved digital tools, ensuring timely reporting on immunization performance, community feedback, and implementation challenges.
  3. Engage community leaders, health workers, and other stakeholders to strengthen community participation, facilitate accountability processes, and promote demand for routine immunization services.
  4. Monitor and document barriers to immunization, identify zero-dose and underimmunized children, and generate evidence to support advocacy and timely corrective actions by relevant authorities.
  5. Prepare high-quality field reports, document lessons learned and best practices, and provide regular updates to the Project Manager to support evidence-based decision-making and adaptive project implementation.

Skills & Qualities  

1. Data Collection and Reporting: Demonstrated ability to collect, verify, analyze, and accurately report field data using digital data collection tools and standard monitoring frameworks.
2. Community Engagement and Communication: Strong interpersonal, facilitation, and communication skills with the ability to effectively engage community leaders, government officials, health workers, and other stakeholders.
3. Monitoring and Problem Solving: Ability to identify implementation challenges, assess service delivery gaps, and provide timely, evidence based recommendations to improve project performance.
4. Organization and Accountability: Excellent organizational and time management skills with the ability to manage multiple field activities, meet reporting deadlines, and maintain high standards of professionalism and integrity.
5. Local Knowledge and Adaptability: Good understanding of the local context in Sokoto State, willingness to travel extensively within assigned LGAs, and ability to work independently and collaboratively in diverse community settings.

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By Dr. Ogbonna Amarachi Onyeyirichi 

Not because people do not know it is happening, but because speaking about it comes at a cost. Conflict-related sexual violence thrives in that silence. Survivors carry the trauma, communities turn a blind eye, institutions fall short, and perpetrators walk away unpunished. Nowhere is this cycle more visible than in North-East Nigeria, where years of insurgency have made sexual violence one of the conflict’s most hidden and enduring legacies. As the world marks the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, we should ask not only why these crimes continue, but why survivors are so often left to confront them alone. I often think that one of the greatest tragedies of conflict-related sexual violence is not only the violence itself, but the silence that surrounds it. Survivors carry unimaginable physical and psychological scars, while communities, institutions, and even justice systems too often look away. The result is a cycle where survivors remain isolated, perpetrators act with impunity, and the crime itself becomes hidden in plain sight.

Conflict-related sexual violence is, sadly, as old as warfare itself. Throughout history, women’s bodies have been treated as spoils of war, as collateral damage, or as tools through which armed groups humiliate, terrorise, and dominate entire communities. Women and girls have been subjected to rape, sexual slavery, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence. Men and boys have also experienced these crimes, although their stories often remain untold because of the profound stigma and shame associated with disclosure. In reality, conflict-related sexual violence includes a broad range of abuses—rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced abortion, enforced sterilisation, forced marriage, and other comparable acts committed against women, men, and children that are directly or indirectly linked to armed conflict.

In Nigeria, the insurgency that has ravaged the North-East for more than a decade has created conditions where these violations flourish. The conflict has displaced millions of people, destroyed livelihoods, fractured communities, and exposed women and children to extraordinary risks. According to humanitarian estimates, by 2019 approximately two million people had been internally displaced across Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe States, with women and children making up around 80 per cent of the displaced population. Within this environment of insecurity and displacement, sexual violence has become not merely a by-product of war but a deliberate strategy used to intimidate, punish, and exert control.

The United Nations has documented patterns of rape, abduction, forced marriage, and sexual slavery committed by armed groups, particularly Boko Haram, against civilian populations. Existing gender inequalities in northern Nigeria have been ruthlessly exploited, with abducted women and girls reportedly offered to fighters as rewards and subjected to gang rape, forced marriage, and sexual servitude. Refusal of sexual demands has, in some cases, resulted in severe punishment, torture, and even execution. The trauma inflicted on survivors does not simply disappear once captivity ends. Some victims struggle with profound emotional and psychological consequences that complicate reintegration into their families and communities, while stigma and fear often prevent them from speaking publicly about their experiences or participating in legal proceedings against their abusers.

What is particularly striking is that the available data almost certainly underestimates the true scale of the problem. The same conditions that enable sexual violence—fear, insecurity, social exclusion, and weak institutions—also suppress reporting. Many survivors never come forward because they know that disclosure may bring shame, rejection, or even further harm. Research conducted by Ojengbede and colleagues in conflict-affected communities across North-East Nigeria offers a sobering picture. Their study found that roughly one in three women surveyed (33.2 per cent) had experienced sexual violence, while one in five (20.5 per cent) had experienced physical violence. Beyond these forms of abuse, 28.4 per cent had experienced socioeconomic violence, 30.5 per cent reported emotional violence, and almost half had been subjected to harmful traditional practices. Even after displacement, women remained vulnerable. About 7.6 per cent reported experiencing sexual violence since being displaced, with perpetrators including Boko Haram insurgents, unknown assailants, members of the police and armed forces, intimate partners, and even relatives. The findings are a reminder that conflict-related sexual violence cannot be understood simply as isolated criminal acts. It exists within a wider ecosystem of violence, inequality, and displacement that leaves women and girls vulnerable long after they have fled active conflict zones. The study also revealed another troubling reality: only about one-third of survivors of sexual violence sought care, and fewer than half of those who experienced physical violence accessed support services. In other words, for many survivors, the violence itself is only the beginning; the journey towards healing and justice is often blocked at every turn.

Part of the challenge lies in the multiple barriers survivors face when trying to seek help. Research carried out in Borno State by the Population Council and Médecins du Monde paints a vivid picture of how these obstacles operate simultaneously at personal, family, community, and institutional levels. Many survivors simply do not know that specialised medical care exists or understand the importance of accessing treatment within the critical 72- to 120-hour window after an assault. Others are paralysed by fear—fear of being blamed, fear of being ostracised, or fear that speaking out will bring dishonour to their families. Families themselves often reinforce this silence. Faced with poverty, displacement, and social pressures, many choose to conceal incidents of rape rather than risk community stigma. Survivors may be actively discouraged from reporting or seeking medical attention because disclosure is perceived as a greater threat than the violence itself. In some communities, rape continues to be viewed as a stain on the victim rather than a crime committed by the perpetrator. Community attitudes deepen the problem. Victim-blaming, discrimination, and social exclusion create an environment where survivors feel they have little to gain and much to lose by coming forward. Poor access to justice reinforces this perception. When perpetrators are rarely investigated or prosecuted, violence becomes normalised, and survivors lose faith in the institutions that are meant to protect them.

Even where survivors decide to seek help, institutional barriers remain daunting. Long waiting times at health facilities, inadequate referral systems, lack of privacy, language barriers, and concerns about confidentiality all reduce access to essential services. Some survivors have reported avoiding clinics altogether because they fear being recognised and labelled by others in their communities. Facility assessments have shown that many health facilities and police stations in camps and host communities simply lack the resources and infrastructure required to manage sexual and gender-based violence cases effectively or support the prosecution of offenders.

The justice gap is perhaps one of the most pressing aspects of this crisis. Legal scholars have argued that Nigeria’s response to conflict-related sexual violence continues to be undermined by outdated laws, weak institutional capacity, and the absence of specialised legal frameworks for prosecuting these crimes. For decades, wartime sexual violence has thrived within what many describe as a “culture of silence,” where victims are reluctant to speak, and society often behaves as though the crime does not exist. This silence serves the interests of perpetrators, allowing them to operate with little fear of accountability. The challenge becomes even more complex in the context of insurgency. Reports have documented instances where Boko Haram fighters took abducted women and girls as so-called “bush wives,” subjecting them to prolonged captivity and abuse. In some cases, survivors who eventually regained their freedom struggled with trauma bonds and emotional attachment to their captors, making it extraordinarily difficult for them to testify in court or participate in prosecutions. These are not signs of consent or acceptance; they are recognised psychological responses to prolonged coercion and abuse. Yet they create additional hurdles for justice systems that are often ill-equipped to understand the realities of conflict-related sexual violence.

And still, despite these immense challenges, there are reasons for hope. Across Nigeria, organisations are developing innovative, survivor-centred approaches that demonstrate what meaningful support can look like. Libraries Without Borders, in partnership with We Are NOT Weapons of War (WWoW), has introduced the BackUp digital platform to support survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in several conflict-affected states. The platform helps connect survivors with medical, psychosocial, legal, and protection services while also strengthening the secure documentation of incidents that can support future accountability efforts.

At the same time, the deployment of offline digital libraries and community-based information hubs is helping to close another critical gap: access to information. Many survivors do not know where to turn, what services are available, or even that they have rights that deserve protection. Providing communities with culturally appropriate information in local languages is a simple but powerful intervention. People cannot access services they do not know exist, and they cannot demand justice for rights they have never been told they possess.

Ultimately, ending conflict-related sexual violence requires much more than annual statements of solidarity. It requires investment in survivor-centred healthcare, stronger referral pathways, trauma-informed psychosocial support, and legal systems that are capable of holding perpetrators accountable. It requires community engagement that challenges the social norms and stigma that keep survivors silent. It requires strengthening data collection and documentation so that the true scale of the problem can no longer be ignored. And perhaps most importantly, it requires listening to survivors themselves and allowing their experiences to shape policy and practice.

As we mark the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, it is worth remembering that sexual violence is not an inevitable consequence of war. It is a deliberate act, enabled by inequality, impunity, and institutional failure. The women and girls in displacement camps across North-East Nigeria, the men and boys whose experiences remain hidden by stigma, and the countless survivors whose stories have never been documented deserve more than symbolic recognition once a year. They deserve justice. They deserve care. And they deserve communities and institutions willing to stand with them rather than turn away.

If this day is to mean anything at all, it must remind us that breaking the silence is only the first step. The real challenge and the real responsibility is ensuring that silence is replaced with action.

By Ogbonna Amarachi Onyeyirichi, Chinedu Emmanuel Odah, and Tajuddeen Garba Muhammed

Every year on March 8, the world pauses to celebrate women. Songs are sung, speeches are made, and social media is filled with tributes. But what is the use of this yearly celebration if it is neither backed by actions nor women-centred? This year’s theme, “Give to Gain,” is not merely a rallying cry. It is a challenge to every individual, institution, and government: what are you willing to give, so that women can gain equal opportunities across all sectors, including the home? We should not just mark the day. We should ask the harder question: what are we giving, and what are women gaining?

While global efforts to empower women are laudable, one cannot help but notice that these efforts do not fully centre women. Whenever individuals, development practitioners, governments, and relevant stakeholders evaluate the profitability of investing in women, they often speak in terms of the benefits accruing to others as a result of women’s empowerment. For example, development practitioners posit that economically empowering women improves household food security and nutrition, especially for children, which is a great outcome. But how does investing in women’s economic empowerment undo the patriarchy of family meals to accommodate women’s dietary needs over the course of their lives?

According to medical professionals, women and men have the same recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for protein at the baseline. As women age, their protein needs increase due to hormonal changes. However, men are culturally entitled to having more protein than women and children across cultures. In the Nigerian context, for instance, the majority of households are multidimensionally poor and can barely afford meat. Yet, even in this scarcity, men’s access to protein sources is prioritised over women’s, although the RDA is the same. But when we measure the impact of investing in women’s economic empowerment on nutrition, we centre the nutrition of children and the entire household, and ignore women’s nutrition. Although the effort to empower women is a step forward, it seems like baptizing patriarchy to mimic gender equality.

Therefore, the theme for the 2026 International Women’s Day (IWD) is a call to action for the world to redirect the focus of women’s empowerment efforts towards women themselves. It simply asks: what will you give to gain gender equality in all aspects of women’s lives? In Nigeria, as in many parts of the world, women continue to navigate spaces that diminish rather than develop them. Even in homes, the spaces that should be the safest, many women endure abuse that rarely makes headlines. Do you remember the tragic story of gospel singer Osinachi Nwachukwu, a case that became a national moment of grief and outrage? Yet for every Osinachi whose story reached the public, there are thousands more whose pain is absorbed in silence, covered by long sleeves, masked by forced smiles, and buried under the weight of social expectation.

Abuse does not always arrive as a blow. Sometimes it comes as words. As control. As isolation. The message is always the same: you are not enough, and you are lucky to be here. When a woman is raised to believe that marriage is a privilege rather than a partnership, that lie becomes her cage. This is not just a personal crisis. It is a social one. Because children are always watching. A boy who grows up watching his father dominate may grow up believing control is love. A girl who watches her mother endure may grow up believing pain is normal. Trauma becomes culture. Silence becomes inheritance. So, what can we give to gain women’s safety within their homes? The answer lies in equipping society, especially men, with the right knowledge on navigating equality in gendered partnerships, both inside and outside the home.

Let’s take a look at how CODE is approaching this. To mark IWD 2026, Community Park and CODE jointly organised a wellness event that centred on women’s hormonal health, an event well attended by both men and women. Through expert discussions and lived experiences shared during the event, CODE used its resources to give the public knowledge on women’s health, to gain understanding and support for women going through various hormonal issues such as menopause, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), premenstrual syndrome (PMS), and fibroids. Also, through CODE’s partnership with the Malala Fund, it has worked to keep girls in schools across underserved communities in Nigeria, especially in the Northern region, through positive mentorship. Education is the single most transformative investment in a girl’s life. It creates the kind of woman who knows her value not because someone told her, but because she has built the evidence herself.

At CODE, we advocate for gender balance. Our organisational structures, hiring frameworks, and leadership pathways are intentionally designed to promote equality and equity. Women at CODE are not just beneficiaries of our work; they lead it. We engage men and boys as partners, not bystanders, because true gender equality can only be achieved by including men in these conversations, enabling them to unlearn harmful patriarchal beliefs and relearn values that allow them to view women with respect and as equal partners. When communities understand that empowered women have more agency, economic independence, and self-reliance, enabling them to raise healthier families and build stronger economies, the conversation shifts from concession to conviction. Therefore, the question must shift: not “what is the world giving women so that the world can gain,” but “what is the world giving women so that women can gain.”

Welcome!

The Digital Mobilization Lab (DML) Fellowship 2026 – Cohort 2 is a 12-week youth-focused civic engagement program by Connected Development (CODE). The fellowship runs from March to May 2026 and is designed for young Nigerians ready to engage in governance, digital advocacy, and community mobilization.

Applicants must be 18–30 years old and available throughout the fellowship period. Priority will be given to women, persons with disabilities (PWD), and applicants from underserved communities.

Please complete this form honestly. Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.

Click Apply Here

By Abdulmalik Yahya

I used to describe education as a pathway to development. It sounded measured, policy-friendly, and safe. But in communities where girls disappear from classrooms before they turn sixteen, development feels too small a word for what is at stake. Education, especially for girls, is about power. It is about who is seen, who is heard, and who is allowed to imagine a future without apology.

Governments across the world have endorsed frameworks such as Sustainable Development Goal 4 on quality education, SDG 5 on gender equality, and SDG 10 on reduced inequality. Progress on paper appears encouraging. Gender gaps in primary enrolment have narrowed in many regions and more girls are in school today than two decades ago.

But it is common knowledge that statistics do not reveal the full reality.

Women still account for the majority of the world’s illiterate adults. In fragile and conflict-affected settings, progress remains uncertain because millions of girls still fail to complete secondary education. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed this weakness when schools closed, and girls carried heavier domestic responsibilities. Many were pushed into early marriage or early motherhood and when schools reopened, not all of them returned.

It is not out of place to say that the crisis in girls’ education is not due to a lack of solutions. We know what improves access and retention. It is a power issue. Poverty, harmful norms, weak accountability, and political neglect determine whose education is treated as urgent and whose can wait. Cultural attitudes toward gender roles shape educational decisions in ways that policy alone cannot reverse. Girls’ education in some parts of the country is still weighed against expectations of early marriage, domestic responsibility, or concerns about safety and reputation. Families may value schooling in principle, yet prioritise sons when resources are limited. Changing these patterns requires sustained dialogue with traditional and religious leaders, engagement with parents, and visible examples of educated women contributing meaningfully to their communities.

This reality is clear in Nigeria. I remember going on an outreach to a secondary school in Yola, Adamawa State, where the headteacher quietly told me that about half of the girls who enrolled three years earlier were no longer there. One had been married at fifteen, another had stopped coming because her family could no longer afford basic supplies, and a few had simply “stopped coming,” as the teacher put it, absorbed into domestic work and responsibilities that leave little room for ambition.

I stood at the back of that classroom to count the girls who remained, and they were fewer than a dozen. I kept wondering not only where the others were, but who had decided that their education could wait. The country has one of the largest populations of out-of-school children in the world, estimated at more than 18.3 million by UNICEF Nigeria on the Out Of School Children (OOSC) fact sheet in 2022, with girls accounting for over 50 per cent of those not attending school at the basic education level. 

Girls carry the heavier burden of exclusion in many northern and rural communities. In parts of the North East and North West, fewer than half of school-age girls attend primary school, and many drop out before moving to secondary school because of cost, insecurity, domestic labour, or early marriage.

Schools have become places of fear in some conflict-affected communities. Improving access to education in such places requires coordinated security arrangements, safe school initiatives, and community-based protection mechanisms that allow parents to trust the journey to and from school. Flexible learning models such as temporary learning centres and accelerated education programmes can help girls who have missed years of schooling reintegrate. Recruiting and training female teachers and mentors with access to safe toilets, or basic learning materials even where classrooms exist will also reassure families and strengthen retention. Policy commitments without these layered protections cannot translate into real attendance, which makes parents hesitate before sending their daughters out each morning. 

Nigeria has established the right to free basic education in law and allocates annual budgets for it, but the challenge is implementation and oversight. The perception at the grassroots level is not that government has done nothing, but that promises rarely reach the classroom, parents often speak of projects announced but never completed, teachers posted but never arriving, and budgets approved but never visible. The gap between policy declarations and lived reality fuels skepticism because the question for many families is not whether education is important, but whether the system can be trusted to deliver it, whether communities can track and question those decisions, and whether gender responsive realities shape planning or remain an afterthought.

When we examine girls’ education from a social justice perspective, the questions we ask shift. Instead of simply inquiring about how many girls are enrolled, we begin to consider which girls remain excluded. We also ask who determines how educational resources are distributed and who ultimately benefits from public spending.

Girls from poor and marginalised communities are too often excluded not only by circumstance but by structure. Budgets are prepared without meaningful community input. Projects are implemented without transparency. Gender needs are treated as secondary. Classrooms may be constructed without considering distance, safety, or sanitation. Yet these are the very factors that determine whether a girl can attend and remain in school.

Justice requires participation, accountability, and that those most affected by decisions have real influence over them.

This understanding shapes how I see the work we do at Connected Development through the Girls’ Education Project supported by the Malala Fund. We work to shift power closer to communities and approach girls’ education as citizenship, not charity. The principle is simple. When citizens understand education budgets, track spending, and engage decision makers with evidence, systems become more responsive to girls’ needs.

Parents in one of the communities in Bauchi State where we worked discovered that funds had been allocated for school improvements that never reached the classroom. Using the Follow The Money model and sustained community engagement, the project was revisited and basic facilities, including a girls’ toilet, were completed. Attendance improved because the school environment became safer and more dignified for girls. 

In Bauchi, Ningi, Alkaleri, and Zaki Local Government area where GEP operates, parents, traditional leaders, youth, and civil society actors monitor allocations and follow up on implementation. Budget figures become real commitments tied to classrooms, teachers, and facilities. Dialogue challenges harmful norms and reinforces the value of girls’ education as a shared responsibility. Girls are recognised as rights holders with agency.

This is corrective justice in practice. It redistributes civic power, strengthens transparency, and embeds accountability at the community level, turning education governance into a partnership between citizens and the state.

If we are serious about justice, then three shifts are necessary. Education budgets must be transparent and publicly accessible; gender-responsive planning must be standard practice, not an afterthought; and communities must be empowered to monitor and question how resources are used. Without these shifts, policy promises will continue to fall short.

The global consensus on girls’ education is strong, and the economic case is clear, but justice does not happen because policies are signed. It happens when public commitments translate into safe, functional, and inclusive classrooms.

Girls’ schooling remains the frontline of equality because it sits at the intersection of rights, resources, and representation. When a girl receives a quality education, she gains agency, and her family gains resilience. Her community gains leadership, and her society gains a more equitable future.

Girls’ education sits at the intersection of how resources are allocated, whose dignity is affirmed, and who shapes decisions. Investing in that is not simply a development strategy, but a deliberate intervention in how power is distributed and a statement about whose future matters.

The question is no longer whether girls’ education matters. The question is whether we are willing to confront the structures that keep girls at the margins. Until we do, equality remains a promise on paper, and education remains the clearest way to make social justice visible.