Pandemic has increased early pregnancies in Africa – Sandrine Berthaud-Clair

During a pandemic, one curve can hide another. While all eyes have been on spikes in sars-cov-2 variant waves since March 2020, spikes in teenage pregnancies have remained off the radar. As the months go by, however, the numbers of the virus drop. In Uganda, the last country to reopen schools on January 11, after 83 weeks of closure, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) recorded more than 650,000 early pregnancies between early 2020 and September 2021.

For African girls, the lockdowns and closures of classes in these two years of health crisis have been fatal. Like a relentless mechanism, the girls’ return home coincided with an explosion of violence, often sexual and gender-based. According to South African Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, director of the United Nations agency for gender equality and women’s empowerment (UN Women), this is a “shadow pandemic” that results in pregnancy and early marriage.

The increase in pregnancies in the 12-18 age group is a clear indicator: +60 per cent in South Africa, where schools were closed 60 weeks; +66 percent in Zimbabwe (44 weeks); + 40 percent in Kenya (37 weeks). In West Africa, where the closures lasted an average of 14 weeks, the damage is less, with the exception of Ghana (39 weeks of closure).

Path as a fighter
In the west of the continent, “in the first five months everything was disorganized”, explains Senegalese Marie Ba, responsible for coordinating the partnership of Ouagadougou, an association that deals with family planning present in nine countries in West Africa: “A lot however, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Mali and others quickly loosened the rules and life resumed its course ”. However, caution is a must, she anticipates, because “a certain number of pregnancies have remained invisible, since health clinics have also been closed”.

The sudden blockade of economic activities, which has pushed various social strata into extreme poverty, has also had an impact on the living conditions of the girls. According to the United Nations, the number of people living on less than € 1.67 a day in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 37 million in 2021. In the vast majority of cases, these are women and girls. Families who were able to bring their children back to school gave priority to boys. According to Unesco, eleven million girls and boys continue to be missing in primary and secondary schools, including one million adolescents who risk early pregnancies. Complications related to pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death between the ages of 12 and 19 worldwide, and each year 3.7 million unsafe abortions result in death or mutilation.

Young mothers hardly ever return to class, but the difficulties begin long before the baby arrives. “African societies still have a lot of difficulty in accepting pregnant girls,” continues Marie Ba. “They are pilloried and, at times, it is the school system itself that rejects them.” Even when states take steps to change mentalities – as in the case of the Ivory Coast, which since 2013 has set itself the goal of having “zero pregnancies at school” – many girls drop out of school for fear of being stigmatized. And nine months of pregnancy equals a whole lost school year.

After giving birth, re-entry to school is a fighter’s path. This possibility is explicitly forbidden in Tanzania (even if the president has promised to lift the ban) and in Togo, but many other countries, where there are no laws that prohibit it, are however refractory because they reduce the problem to a question of morality. On the other hand, even states that are favorable may not have the means to accompany the return to class of young mothers.

Faced with the enormous scale of the problem, local and international associations and NGOs have mobilized. The Unesco World Coalition for Education has launched the Gender Equality Program to persuade states to strengthen the education of girls and girls, including those who are pregnant. This issue was at the heart of the third summit on African girls, which took place in Niamey in mid-November 2021 at the initiative of the African Union and the African Committee of Experts on Children’s Rights and Welfare.

Getting school and health back on their feet
In December 2020, the World Partnership for Education (GPE), an important support for developing countries, launched the Accelerator for Girls’ Education, a funding mechanism endowed with 250 million dollars (224 million euros) to help governments get these girls back to school. This sum comes on top of the $ 500 million already mobilized to allow states to resume school systems demolished by Covid-19. These are special funds that will be released on the basis of “results”, explains Jo Bourne, director of programs of the GPE: “We need to protect the budgets of the countries and convince them to invest more, but the problem is deeper. Social norms must change if we want girls to no longer be the eternal marginalized ”.

“If we want change in the long term, public policies must take gender issues into consideration,” said Haingo Rabearimonjy, director of programs for Africa of the International Federation for Family Planning (Ippf). The pandemic proved it. “These two years have prompted us to think about an intersectoral response,” he continues. “And now we see its evolution: the ministries of education, health, women’s rights, family planning are starting to work together”.

On the ground, the health crisis has also forced those in charge of sexual health education to reinvent themselves. “Since we have managed to regain some flexibility, we have used social networks, applications, online and offline platforms, mobile clinics, door-to-door visits to be able to reach the young women”, Rabearimonjy testifies. A capacity for adaptation that has allowed real progress to be made in the field of contraception.

“All the countries of West Africa have achieved their goals”, Marie Ba is keen to remember. “Even though giving information to girls at school is still taboo, the environment has evolved a lot over the past decade. Today it is easy to talk about family planning for political leaders who are observing more carefully the economic consequences of greater autonomy for women ”.

And the development that follows. In 2018, the World Bank estimated that the loss of wealth for the twelve countries on the continent with the highest rates of child marriages amounted to € 55.4 billion. “An education lost for every teenager is a catastrophe”, summarizes Rabearimonjy. “For her, for her son and for her country”.

(Translation by Giusy Muzzopappa)