Governments in Africa spend 16 times less on younger children than on older ones, study finds

JOHANNESBURG / NAIROBI / DAKAR / AMMAN, 7 October 2024 – Governments in Africa overwhelmingly allocate social spending toward older children while overlooking the youngest, according to new data released by UNICEF and the Learning for Well-being Institute. These results suggest that countries are taking an imbalanced approach to developing their nation’s human capital, by not investing in building the foundation required from day zero.

Based on available key social sector spending data, countries across Africa appear to spend 16 times as much on a child aged 15 as they do on a one-year-old. Of total key social spending on children in Africa, 6.5 per cent went to children aged 0 to 5 years. By contrast, G20 countries spend 28 per cent on the same age group. African governments spend the majority – 55 per cent – of key social spending on children aged 12 to 17 years. Even if the extensive data cannot capture all spending perfectly, this is a stark difference in the prioritisation of spending. “The evidence is very clear that the first few years of life provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to set-up a healthy adult life and give the greatest potential to boost a country's human capital,” said UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Gilles Fagninou. “Even though our youngest children are at least a decade away from adulthood, this is where investments can produce the biggest impact and set children up for success.”

A country’s human capital is crucial for wellbeing of households and central to national economic growth and development. While much guidance to governments in the past on building human capital has focused on developing skills and education of the youth, more recent evidence demonstrates that this can only occur effectively when built on a strong foundation of investments in the early years. The education sector serves as a useful example of this – evidence shows that children who benefit from early education will do better in later years of schooling, thereby improving the efficiency of later years’ spending. A key study in 2017 (Heckman) estimated a rate of return on early childhood investments of 10–14 per cent. And the World Bank found that young children who are better nourished go on to earn up to 50 per cent more than their malnourished counterparts.

These new results illustrate that social spending in Africa by age does not adequately support pregnant women, babies and pre-school children. Without such a foundation, spending in later years is unlikely to be efficient or effective in building a country’s human capital.

UNICEF’s Regional Director in East and Southern Africa, Etleva Kadilli said, “We know that investing in all children throughout their life is crucial for their development and that of wider society. But what we are now very clearly seeing is that spending in Africa is instead significantly skewed toward older ages, with an enormous gap in spending on the youngest. Aside from the high return to investing in young children, families need support – during pregnancy, with childcare, and cash support to raise young children – this gap must be filled if we are to realise the potential of Africa’s growing child population.”

“There are very few investments that are as important and impactful as investments in early childhood development, and especially in early childhood education, because it is these investments that provide a strong foundation for later academic, social and emotional growth for children, and a catalyst for future economic growth, prosperity and development,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF Regional Director for Middle East and North Africa.

Dominic Richardson, Managing Director of the Learning for Well-being Institute said “Countries need to map and manage the child policy portfolio across the life course, from pregnancy to preschool and beyond. Knowing where the money is going empowers government to make evidence-informed decisions regarding future spending and the complementarity of multi-sectoral policy efforts for children.” While many countries now track social spending by age, little evidence exists for Africa. It is critically important that African governments can track social sector spending by age as a basis to inform policy decisions that benefit child well-being and broader society.

As African economies continue to grow and develop, it is crucial that governments are aware of this skewed social spending by age and ensure that new money in the future be allocated to the youngest children to plug the gap.

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Note on data and methodology: The brief presents analysis of the latest data on key social spending by age across countries in Africa for children and youth. It is based on the methodology laid out in UNICEF’s “Too Little, Too Late” publication (2023), which looks at a country’s key social sector spending allocations as published in global budget datasets. When considering public spending to benefit children, expenditures are required across a wide range of sectors. In practice, some government spending is not tagged or visible in a budget as being related to children – such as spending on health, which benefits entire populations. One limitation is therefore that spending on health could not be included in the analysis. To give context, existing evidence on budgets suggests that health spending is around a quarter of education spending in low- and middle-income countries. The analysis presents age-spending profiles that include public expenditure on education, social protection, child protection and early childhood development. The data analysed comes from global social spending databases and relates to 2015 and 2019. It is mapped by age from prenatal up to age 23. It reflects statutory programmes, meaning established, national initiatives are included, and temporary or pilot initiatives are not. Spending amounts are per capita (not per actual child recipient) – meaning that total spending is divided by the number of children in the country of each age, reflecting the real need. Spending per capita is determined on average across the whole age range eligible for the service in question. Finally, two data points are presented in each spending profile – 2015 and 2019.