Almost 80,000 teenage girls in Ghana between the ages of 12 and 17 are reportedly already married or living with a man.
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), which made this revelation indicates that almost 26,000 of these girls are of Junior High School age between 12 and 14 years.
A report based on the 2021 Population and Housing Census was released by the GSS to coincide with the International Day of the Girl Child which is being observed globally today.
The report highlights challenges preventing young girls from reaching their full potentials such as early marriage and lack of access to educational and other opportunities.
The three northern regions have been identified as the regions with the highest number of girls in these unions.
The North East and the Savannah are the regions with the highest percentages with 13% and 10.9% respectively and the Northern Region, 10.6%.
The report indicates that almost a quarter of a million girls aged 6-14 in the north have never attended school at all in spite of the free and compulsory universal basic education making it the area with the highest number of girls who never attended school. 73,516 in the northern region, 27,930 in the North East and 22857 in the Savanna regions.
These three regions also currently have the highest percentage of girls currently not attending school, never attended or attended in the past.
Savannah leads all the regions with 40.2% followed by the North East Region with 29.3% and the Northern Region 28.5%.