Nigeria's emerging care-economy agenda raises a question its own framing does not yet answer: if care is essential to the functioning of society, who is expected to bear its cost?
In May 2026, Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation announced that the Federal Government had reaffirmed its commitment to advancing the care economy as a pillar of national development. By August, the Ministry reported that the conversation had moved further: at the 26th National Council on Women Affairs, Child Advancement and Social Development, the Federal Government called on states to translate commitments on social protection and the care economy into concrete action and measurable results. The Council's theme was “Strengthening Families and Advancing the Care Economy for Inclusive Development.”
The shift is important. Care is increasingly being recognised not simply as something that happens inside private households, but as part of social and economic development.
That recognition creates a question that is easier to overlook.
If care is essential to the functioning of society, who is expected to bear its cost?
Every day, Nigerian families provide care that rarely appears in economic statistics. Parents look after children, relatives support older family members, households respond to illness and disability, and people reorganise their working lives around these responsibilities. Much of this work is unpaid. Yet the fact that it happens within families does not make its consequences private.
The cost of care can be paid in money. It can also be paid in time, lost income, reduced employment opportunities or foregone education. And those costs are not distributed equally.
Consider childcare. A parent who cannot find affordable, reliable childcare may have to reduce their working hours, rely on relatives, turn down an opportunity or leave employment altogether. A household with greater resources may be able to purchase private childcare. Another may have no realistic alternative to unpaid family care.
The need for care has not changed. What has changed is who absorbs the consequences.
Research by the International Finance Corporation illustrates this clearly in Nigeria. It reports that parents can struggle to find good-quality childcare because services are often expensive, low quality, distant or offered at inconvenient hours. The IFC also finds that these barriers limit parents' opportunities, particularly women's opportunities to access better-quality and better-paying jobs with greater security.
This means childcare is not simply a service for parents. It is part of the infrastructure that allows people to participate in the economy.
The same principle applies to other forms of care. When a family member becomes seriously ill, someone may have to take time away from work. When an older relative requires assistance, someone may reduce their working hours or absorb additional responsibilities. When a child needs care, a parent or another family member must provide it, regardless of whether the household has the resources to do so comfortably.
Care therefore has an economic dimension even when no money changes hands. This is one reason the term care economy matters.
It draws attention to the relationship between paid and unpaid care work and to the systems that make care possible. The International Labour Organization has identified care responsibilities as a major barrier to women's participation in paid employment, and has argued that effective care systems require coordinated policies covering care services, social protection and labour protections.
The scale of the issue is substantial. In 2023, an estimated 748 million people globally were outside the labour force because of care responsibilities. Of these, 708 million were women and 40 million were men. The ILO's estimates, based on data from 125 countries, demonstrate the extent to which unpaid care responsibilities can shape participation in paid work.
Nigeria's current legal and policy framework also illustrates why this matters. The ILO's Global Care Policy Portal records that Nigeria had no statutory parental leave or statutory paternity leave in its 2025 country data.
These are not merely technical gaps in employment regulation. They affect what happens when work and family responsibilities collide.
If a worker needs time to care for a new child or an ill family member and the formal system provides little or no entitlement to that time, the responsibility does not disappear. It is transferred to the household, the employer, another relative or the worker's own income.
The family becomes the shock absorber.
This is particularly important because families are already carrying substantial responsibilities that formal systems do not fully account for. And when these responsibilities are unevenly distributed within households, the economic consequences can be uneven as well.
The question of care is therefore also a question about opportunity.
- Who can remain in employment after becoming a parent?
- Who can accept a promotion that requires longer hours?
- Who can travel for work?
- Who can pursue additional education?
- Who can start or expand a business?
These questions are not determined by caregiving alone. But caregiving can influence the choices available to people. This is where the workplace becomes part of family policy, whether employers intend it or not.
Working hours, leave, flexibility and expectations about availability all shape how employees manage their responsibilities outside work. An organisation may never describe itself as a family-policy actor, yet its employment practices can determine whether a parent can remain economically active while caring for a child.
The private sector therefore has a role to play. So does government. So do communities. And families themselves remain central.
But recognising shared responsibility does not mean that every family member providing ordinary care should be paid. That distinction matters.
Parents do not need a salary for raising their children, and turning every act of family care into a market transaction would create problems of its own. The objective should not be to monetise family relationships.
The issue is what happens when caregiving creates significant economic or practical burdens that individual households cannot reasonably absorb alone. The appropriate response can take different forms: accessible childcare, parental leave, flexible working arrangements, social protection, respite services, affordable health and social care, or targeted assistance where intensive caregiving creates serious economic hardship.
The point is not that government must provide all of these things in every circumstance. The point is that families should have meaningful support and choices rather than being expected to absorb every consequence of caregiving privately.
This is where Nigeria's emerging care-economy agenda could become more than a new policy phrase.
A functioning care system cannot be built by one ministry or one programme. Childcare involves education, social development, labour and the private sector. Long-term care connects health, social protection and family policy. Workplace practices connect employers to the everyday realities of households.
Care cuts across institutions because family life cuts across institutions. A family's ability to thrive is influenced not only by what happens inside the household, but also by whether the surrounding environment makes family responsibilities manageable.
This has an important implication for how Nigeria thinks about family policy. Family policy cannot be limited to programmes explicitly labelled for families. Housing, transport, employment, healthcare, social protection and childcare policies can all alter the conditions in which families live and care for one another. A policy may therefore affect families profoundly without ever using the word “family”.
Nigeria's current attention to the care economy offers an opportunity to recognise that connection. But recognition alone will not be enough.
The country needs better evidence about who provides unpaid care, how caregiving affects employment and household income, what childcare families can actually access, and where the greatest gaps exist. It also needs to understand which forms of support are most effective for different types of households.
The objective should not be to remove care from families. It should be to make family care sustainable.
Families will remain at the centre of caring for their members. That is not a problem to be solved. The policy challenge is ensuring that families are not left to carry responsibilities whose consequences extend far beyond the household without adequate support from the systems around them.
Care may take place in a home. But its effects are felt in workplaces, schools, businesses, health systems and the wider economy.
That is why the question of who pays for care is ultimately larger than a question about childcare or family benefits. It is a question about how a society distributes the time, money and responsibility required to care for its people.
As Nigeria develops its care-economy agenda, that should be the test: not simply whether care has been recognised as important, but whether the systems around families are making it possible for people to care without having to choose between family wellbeing and economic security.