Nigeria’s ambition to build a $1tn economy by 2050 could be undermined if the country fails to urgently invest in early childhood development, the World Bank has warned.

The warning came during a policy dialogue held in Abuja on Tuesday, themed “Early Childhood, Productivity and Nigeria’s Growth Choices”.

Development experts at the event highlighted that gaps in nutrition, healthcare, learning and protection formed before the age of five are already shaping the future productivity of millions of Nigerian children.

They cautioned that without deliberate and coordinated action, the country risks turning its demographic advantage into a long-term economic liability.

Ritgak Tilley-Gyado, Lead, Early Years Programme at the World Bank, posed a pointed question to policymakers and stakeholders.

“Can Nigeria become a trillion-dollar economy by 2050 without deliberately investing in its youngest citizens?” she asked.

“By then, the cohort of children that are aged zero to five today will be between 15 and 21 years old ripe, active and ready to participate in the labour force or about to be”, she stated.

She argued that while national conversations often centre on macroeconomic reforms, infrastructure expansion and job creation, the foundations of human capital are laid much earlier, in pregnancy, infancy and the first few years of life.

According to her, disparities in learning ability, health outcomes and life skills frequently begin before a child turns five and become far more expensive and difficult to reverse later.

“Early childhood investment is not social spending. It is an economic strategy,” she said, stressing that by the time governments attempt to tackle inequality in adolescence or adulthood, the roots of those disparities are already deeply entrenched.

She described two children born with equal potential but raised under different conditions.

One benefits from adequate nutrition, safe surroundings and responsive caregiving; the other faces illness, chronic stress and delayed support.

“By the time both children enter school, she said, their developmental paths have already diverged”, she noted.

Tilley-Gyado also criticised policy fragmentation across ministries, warning that children do not grow up in administrative silos.

Health, nutrition, sanitation, safety and early learning are interconnected, and weak coordination across these areas can undermine outcomes, even in households making deliberate efforts to support their children.

She further cautioned that Nigeria’s youthful population will not automatically translate into prosperity.

“Demographics alone do not guarantee prosperity. A young population becomes an asset only when its youngest children develop the capabilities to thrive as adults”, she said.

Without deliberate investment, she warned, rapid population growth could deepen inequality rather than reduce it.

Citing global evidence, the World Bank noted that early childhood interventions generate some of the highest returns available to societies, with each dollar invested yielding up to $13 in higher productivity, increased earnings and reduced social costs over time.

Also speaking at the event, Ikemesit Effiong, Managing Partner at SBM Intelligence, said Nigeria is already losing critical productivity potential in the earliest years of life, long before children enter the formal education system.

He said the dialogue was anchored on an uncomfortable reality: by the time a child starts Primary One, many of the determinants of future productivity, including nutrition, health, stimulation and protection, have already been shaped.

Citing the 2024 Demographic and Health Survey, Effiong noted that under-five mortality has declined to about 110 deaths per 1,000 live births from 132 in 2018.

“However, neonatal mortality remains high at about 41 per 1,000 live births.

“In plain language, almost half of the children we lose before age five die in the first month of life,” he said.

He added that roughly 40 per cent of Nigerian children under five are stunted, a condition linked to chronic undernutrition and poor early environments.

“These are not just health statistics; they are early warnings about the future workforce, future taxpayers and future innovators our economy will either have or not have,” Effiong said.

Describing early deprivation as a “productivity crisis that arrives 20 years before someone first searches for a job,” he warned that continued underinvestment in the first 1,000 days of life would weaken the returns from later spending on schooling, job training and skills acquisition.

He urged government to treat early childhood development as core economic infrastructure rather than a marginal social programme.

Tosin Olorunmoteni, a paediatric neuroscientist at Obafemi Awolowo University, said early childhood development rests on what experts call the “nurturing care framework”, encompassing health, nutrition, responsive caregiving, safety and early learning.

She stressed that brain development is most rapid in the first 2,000 days of life, warning that nearly half of Nigerian children live in poverty, about 40 per cent are stunted, millions are out of school, and exposure to violence, poor sanitation and weak health systems continues to shape negative developmental pathways from birth.

Olorunmoteni called for a comprehensive, multisectoral national strategy combining universal support for all children with targeted interventions for those at risk.

She advocated stronger screening systems, improved data collection and coordinated service delivery.

Joe Abah, Country Director of DAI Global, warned that Nigeria could face a demographic disaster if it fails to prioritise early childhood development.

“If you’re not having adequate nutrition, good healthcare, responsible caregiving and protection from harm, then you’re raising a battalion of young people who are already disadvantaged at the start of their lives.

“Any country’s most important resource is its human beings. If we don’t focus on our children, we risk turning what should be a demographic dividend into a demographic disaster”, he said.

Abah argued that Nigeria’s early childhood challenge is less about the absence of policy and more about weak coordination, poor financing and limited accountability across federal and state governments.

Although frameworks such as the Child Rights Act and national early childhood policies exist, he said implementation remains fragmented and funding inadequate.

He called for the creation of a unified, multisectoral framework with clear budget commitments, stronger monitoring systems and high-level political oversight that places the child, rather than institutions, at the centre of government action.

On his part, Vahyala Kwaga, Deputy Country Director of the BudgIT Foundation, said Nigeria is not spending sufficiently on early childhood development and lacks transparency in budget releases.

“We’re not spending as well as we should. The public financial ecosystem doesn’t give a clear line of sight of budgeting and releases,” Kwaga said.

He noted that weak tracking of allocations makes it difficult for advocates to push for improved spending and accountability.

The evidence lab brought together think tanks, development partners, and academics to examine how early childhood outcomes shape Nigeria’s long-term growth trajectory and to identify reforms needed to align policy, financing and service delivery around the first years of life.