Authored by: Liz Lum and Foster Mafiala
As members of sub-Saharan Africa’s “youth bulge,” we represent a historic opportunity.
It is hard to overstate the profound opportunity presented by our generation. If we are supported to reach our full potential, we can serve as a powerful force to transform our communities, countries, continent, and the world. The math makes this clear – by 2030, young Africans will make up 42% of global youth.
There is no more important factor in our ability to lead this transformation than our sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). SRHR plays a major role in whether we can pursue our education, stay healthy, be economically productive, make our own reproductive life plans and one day give our own children (if and when we have them) a healthy start for a productive life.
Currently, research indicates that sub-Saharan Africa’s youth lag far behind on most measures of SRHR – including knowledge, access, and decision-making power.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s youth birth rate is more than double the global average, with over 100 births per 1,000 women, reflecting stark inequities in sexual and reproductive health and rights. We cannot accept that an estimated 332,000 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 and more than six million girls between the ages of 15 and 19 on the continent gave birth in 2021 alone —particularly that many of those pregnancies were unintended. Similarly, it is unacceptable that Southern Africa’s adolescent girls remain at a disproportionately high risk for contracting HIV and accounted for 63% of all new HIV infections in 2021.
We are leaders in our communities working to bridge the gap between governments, health services, knowledge, and our peers. And we are evidence that there is a cohort of young people committed and equipped to connecting solutions with communities in need.
This cohort of young people is the largest, most educated, most urbanized generation in our continent’s history. We are experts in our lived realities. It is critical that our generation is recognized not just as beneficiaries or victims waiting to be uplifted, but as equal partners with a drive to invest in and improve their own health and wellbeing.
Health system decision-makers can support adolescents and adolescent leaders as changemakers in our communities in three ways, through: access, funding, and opportunity.
Access, to us, means increasing access to comprehensive and youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health and rights information and services, and decision-making structures.
An example of this is The Adolescent Wellness Center in Bamenda, Cameroon’s Regional Hospital. Working in an extremely unstable environment that has seen conflict disrupt the delivery of healthcare over the last six years, youth-led and youth-centered organizations partnered with hospital administrators and staff to design and implement programs to deliver specialized care and information of particular interest to young people. The Center provides care and information that ranges from guidance on nutrition and social media use and treatment for everyday health concerns such as acne and menstrual pain, to mental health screenings and substance abuse treatment, to complex sexual and reproductive health information and services.
This requires funding. By funding, we are calling for more than just line items in national budgets. We are calling on national leaders to fund grassroots youth organizations led by young people who have deep personal experience with the challenges and recognize innovative and effective solutions that can reach even the most vulnerable groups. Malawi’s National Youth Service is an example of this sort of targeted funding.
Lastly, we need to create space and opportunity for youth engagement. By opportunity, we mean supporting capacity building for young people so that they can effectively lead in their communities. This includes intergenerational collaboration and learning, sharing knowledge and exchanging resources. An example of this is a youth leadership academy in Malawi, the Next Generation Youth Leaders’ Academy, which was launched by the National Democratic Institute and supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. The Academy supports 24 youth fellows as they develop skills to advocate for youth priorities within their organizations, parties, and communities.
All of this work needs to start early, connecting with young people in advance of puberty and menstruation and keeping them connected with sexual health and reproductive services throughout their lives. Today, for example, too many girls miss or drop out of school when they begin menstruating for lack of feminine hygiene products, latrines in schools, or because of harmful gender norms such as child marriage. And that is only the first sexual and reproductive health hurdle facing female youth in their lifecycle.
There isn’t a silver bullet for this challenge or many of the other SRHR challenges facing Africa’s youth. But there are ways forward. In the case of menstruation, there are a few effective levers linked to our three asks of access, funding, and opportunity including: education (for girls and boys), the removal of taxes and support for subsidies for menstrual products, and empowering youth-led efforts to address the stigma, myths, and taboos that surround menstruation and perpetuate a cycle of disadvantage.
Across our continent, young leaders are working to address these challenges.
Our willingness to invest in closing the current gap and supporting adolescent sexual health and reproductive rights in sub-Saharan Africa will shape the course of our future as individuals and as global citizens. Research shows that investments in reproductive health protect young people, allow them to live healthy and productive lives, and improve social and economic development.
Africa’s youth bulge is not a guarantee for a better future. It is merely an opportunity for Africa’s leaders, including youth leaders, to seize.
Leveraging this moment requires closing the gap between young people and the solutions that exist. Youth participation in Africa’s transformation is both our means and our end goal.
About the authors:
Liz Lum is a young activist and leader in the fight for gender equality and inclusive societies. She leads initiatives like emergency pad-kits for schools and campaigns for tax-free period products in Cameroon. As an Adolescent Girls and Young Women consultant she designs modules, programs and activities for Adolescent Girls and Young Women, ensuring that these modules factor in the realities of this group, bringing forward better strategies to engage this group. Liz is a young board member at COMAGEND Cameroon, where she works with internally displaced girls on SRHR/HIV service delivery policy monitoring and implementation. She is a Youth Advisor for the Exemplars in Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health, implemented by the African Institute for Development Policy. She is a Women Deliver Young Leader 2020, was a Participatory Grantmaking Advisor at Global Fund for Women USA, a nominee for the International Children’s Peace Prize 2020, and an award-winning storyteller at World Pulse. Her ultimate goal is to create a world where young people are equal partners in leadership, policy, and decision-making processes.
Foster Mafiala is a youth advocate with a passion for addressing issues affecting young people including sexual and reproductive health and rights, meaningful youth participation, gender equality and inclusivity as well as HIV and AIDS. He is currently a youth officer for SRHR Africa Trust (SAT). He is also part of the Technical Working Group of the global research program ASHER. He also seats on a Youth Advisory Panel for SRHR Regional Fund for HIVOS Eastern and Southern Africa and has represented young people in youth advisory group of the Youth Wyze study by the Royal Tropical Institute of Netherlands. He has participated in various global forum including ICASA 2019, ICFP 2022 and Women Deliver 2023.