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Good practice Imported

More Than Brides Alliance — "Marriage: No Child's Play" in Niger

Niger · Maradi · See the Niger profile

Evidence: Quasi-experimental Top 62% 56/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Niger has one of the world's highest child-marriage rates. A 2016–2020 girls'-empowerment programme by the More Than Brides Alliance raised knowledge and income, but a rigorous evaluation found no significant reduction in child marriage itself.

15.0% → 29.6%
Girls with knowledge of legal minimum marriage age (intervention villages) (2016–2020)
23.8% → 67.1%
Girls currently earning income (intervention villages) (2016–2020)
25.7% → 15.9%
Girls ever married (intervention villages) (2016–2020)
37.7% → 15.9%
Girls ever married (comparison villages) (2016–2020)
More Than Brides Alliance — "Marriage: No Child's Play" in Niger

Details

Maturity
Discontinued
Promoter
More Than Brides Alliance (Save the Children Netherlands, Oxfam Novib, Simavi) with Population Council
Period
2016–2020
Keywords
child marriage prevention, adolescent girls, reproductive health, community empowerment

Context

Niger has among the highest child-marriage rates in the world: Demographic and Health Survey data from 2012 found about 76% of women aged 20–24 had married before age 18, and 28% before age 15.

Objectives

Between 2016 and 2020, the More Than Brides Alliance — a consortium of Save the Children Netherlands, Oxfam Novib and Simavi, funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs — set out to delay marriage for girls aged 12–19 in Niger's Tillabéri and Maradi regions through a girls'-empowerment programme called "Marriage: No Child's Play".

Activities

The programme combined life-skills mentoring, safe spaces and community dialogue, delivered through local NGOs including SOS Femmes et Filles Victimes de Violence Familiale, ADD Fassali, SongES, ASEC Mungane and ANBEF.

Results

A quasi-experimental evaluation by the Population Council, using matched-comparison villages with repeat cross-sectional surveys at baseline (2016/17), midline (2018) and endline (2020), found no beneficial effect on marriage rates: the share of girls ever married fell in both intervention villages (25.7% to 15.9%) and comparison villages (37.7% to 15.9%), with comparison villages declining faster (difference-in-differences p=.098, marginally significant and in the unfavourable direction). Secondary outcomes did improve: knowledge of the legal minimum marriage age rose from 15.0% to 29.6% in intervention villages (versus 19.3% to 19.8% in comparison villages), and the share of girls currently earning income rose from 23.8% to 67.1% in intervention villages.

Conclusions

The evaluators — an independent academic and NGO research team — conclude that community-based empowerment programming can shift girls' knowledge and economic activity, but caution that this model did not demonstrate a causal effect on delaying marriage in the Niger context within the evaluation period. The programme ended in 2020, with no evidence found of continuation or further replication in Niger.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — 2016–2020, four-year programme with baseline/midline/endline evaluation waves.
Staffing & skills
Delivered through local implementing NGOs — SOS Femmes et Filles Victimes de Violence Familiale, ADD Fassali, SongES, ASEC Mungane and ANBEF — under the More Than Brides Alliance consortium (Save the Children Netherlands, Oxfam Novib, Simavi) with Population Council as evaluator.

Conditions for success

  • Combined life-skills mentoring, safe spaces and community dialogue delivered directly to girls aged 12–19.

Common failure modes

  • A rigorous matched-comparison evaluation found no causal effect on delaying marriage itself, despite gains in knowledge and income — indicating that empowerment-only programming without complementary community/legal-level interventions may be insufficient to shift marriage timing in high-prevalence contexts.

Where it fits

Governance type
NGO-led programme
Scale
sub-national (Tillabéri and Maradi regions)
Income level
low-income (Niger, LDC)

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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