Caregiving burdens fall on women. This Nigerian woman wants to change that.

It’s 7 a.m. on a Monday, and the clamor of automobile engines fills the air, the soundtrack of millions of Lagos residents heading to work. Kindergarten teacher Fatimoh Adeyemi is one of them. But first, she stops in front of a simple white stucco house. With her teenage daughter Ayomide strapped to her back, she heads inside.

The bright-green room that greets her is thrumming with energy. Two caregivers in matching geometric tops help lift Ayomide, who has cerebral palsy, into a cushy red lounge chair.

Since 2022, Ayomide has spent her days here at Flora’s Trust Center, playing and receiving specialized therapy alongside a dozen other kids with disabilities. “I go to work with a relaxed mind,” Ms. Adeyemi says.

At the same moment, on the other side of town, Olajumoke Bankole is also beginning her workday. She walks to the stairwell in her apartment building, looking for residents who want to buy a soda from her. Ms. Bankole can’t go any farther than this, because her 8-year-old daughter, Temitope, also lives with cerebral palsy, and she is her sole caretaker.

For Ms. Bankole, the sound of the traffic outside is a reminder of a lost life. Before Temitope was born, she sold drinks on a bustling street corner. Now, she hardly ever leaves home. 

Although they live in the same city, Ms. Adeyemi and Ms. Bankole sit on opposite ends of a global divide. From Nigeria to Nebraska to Nepal, 2 billion people work as informal, unpaid caregivers to older adults and people who are sick or disabled. More than three-quarters are women, and the consequences for their careers and general well-being are often severe.

“I don’t want other mothers to suffer,” says Chika Ugochukwu, who founded Flora’s Trust Center after years of caring for her son Arinze alone. 

The burdens of care

Public funding for disability support in low- and middle-income countries like Nigeria is minimal, averaging less than 0.3% of gross domestic product, compared with 1.4% in high-income nations. 

That void is filled by family members, usually women. Indeed, across the African continent, women spend more than three times as much time as men on unpaid “care work” – a broad term that encompasses everything from drawing the children’s nightly bath to walking an older parent to the clinic to hanging out the family’s laundry on the line to dry. 

“Nigeria has a patriarchal society, so there are ... expectations that women should handle all the household chores and not complain,” says Emilia Okon, a Nigerian gender and development specialist. 

For instance, although Ms. Bankole’s husband doesn’t work, it is she who is solely responsible for helping Temitope eat, play, and sleep. When their daughter has a seizure in the middle of the night, as she frequently does, it is Ms. Bankole who rises to comfort her.

The value of this labor is enormous. In Nigeria, experts estimate that if the domestic work of women like Ms. Bankole were paid, it would add between 10% and 39% to the country’s GDP. More broadly, if unpaid care workers received wages, they would contribute an additional $11 trillion annually to the global economy.

Meanwhile, the burdens of unpaid caregiving also impoverish women in other ways. 

When she was Ayomide’s sole caregiver, Ms. Adeyemi says, her world shrank to just their immediate family. Without a wider circle of friends, she rarely received invitations to owambe parties – the lavish celebrations of life milestones common in her Yoruba culture. She was isolated and deeply lonely. 

 “I’m [still] trying to rekindle my social life now,” Ms. Adeyemi says. 

One mother’s mission 

Ms. Ugochukwu knows what it is like to face caring for a child with a disability on your own.

Soon after her son Arinze was born in 2004, he developed cerebral palsy and needed round-the-clock care. It quickly became obvious to Ms. Ugochukwu that she wouldn’t be able to return to the law firm where she had worked. 

Instead, she began freelancing, and sent Arinze to the only local care center in her price range. But it was only open in the mornings, and often took hours to reach in snarling rush-hour traffic. Some months, Ms. Ugochukwu’s earnings didn’t even cover the costs of the care center, let alone rent and groceries.

Ms. Ugochukwu’s tipping point came when Arinze was 4 years old and fractured his hip. She still doesn’t know exactly how it happened, but he was in someone else’s care, and the experience terrified her. Soon after, she quit her law work completely.

Driven by her experience, Ms. Ugochukwu launched Flora’s Trust Center in 2021 to provide specialized, professional care for other children with cerebral palsy. Even after Arinze died two years later, Ms. Ugochukwu’s resolve remained unshaken. Today, the center is open 24 hours a day, and has three full-time staff members. Occupational, speech, and physical therapists also visit the children regularly. 

Originally, Ms. Ugochukwu funded the entire operation with donations. But as inflation in Nigeria skyrocketed, she couldn’t keep up. Today, she estimates her running costs are more than $600 monthly, and she charges families on a pay-what-you-can basis. 

“Even the minimal fee we initially proposed was unaffordable for most,” she says. Meanwhile, demand is soaring, pointing to the wider gaps in care for people with disabilities in Nigeria. 

“Only the government can scale such operations,” says Ms. Okon, the gender and development expert. But Nigeria’s public health care system is also heavily reliant on donor funding, meaning money often ebbs and flows, she notes.

For mothers like Ms. Bankole, professional caregiving support would be life-changing. Within the dim confines of her apartment, her days unfold in a predictable manner, monotonous as the leaks from the sewage pipes lining the building’s exterior. 

On a recent morning, she slumps wearily onto the room’s solitary sofa, keeping her eyes on Temitope, who is entertaining herself with the crinkling sounds of nylon bags.

The girl’s happiness is simple but profound. “I have accepted everything as God’s plan,” Ms. Bankole says. However, she still wants more for herself and her daughter. She says she dreams of them both one day having a life beyond these four walls. 

Meanwhile, back on the other side of town,  Ms. Adeyemi’s workday ends at 2:30 p.m. She still has a few hours to spare before she is due back to collect Ayomide, so she preps her lesson notes for the next day, and daydreams about the general store she wants to open soon. 

“Having a place I can entrust my daughter’s care gives me room to pursue my dream,” she says.