[AFRICA 4] What's driving high teenage pregnancy rates in Africa?

TEENAGE PREGNANCY IN AFRICA

Why are school children getting pregnant?

What are the main challenges?

It was one of my first days in a small rural village, Liphiring community in Lesotho. In October 2010, I came to this village to work as a community volunteer for the next 2 years. I was invited by a local secondary school to introduce myself in front of entire school children.

"Hello everyone, My name is Moonju from South Korea. I am 24 years old and I am looking forward to working with you all. Please feel free to ask me any questions." And instantly, first questions came. 

"So, How many children do you have?" 

"Oh, I am not married yet."

"Yes, but How many kids do you have?" 

"I just said....I am not married and I don't have kids..."

This was my first shocking reaction before I learned about high pregnancy rates in school children in Lesotho. For these children, it was strange to see a 24 years old girl not having any single kid. Girls aged between 15-19 who already had children or were pregnant in Lesotho were reported at 25.1% in 2014, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators. Some of them became pregnant as young as under 13 years of age and many of them started having sex before their 15th birthday. Imagine 1 out of 4 students in your class are pregnant and have to drop off school.

As much as I spent more time with school children, I got curious to know about the reasons for this high pregnancy rates. Through my experiences living with them in the same village for 2 years, I learned that most of this children became pregnant during school holidays. Having sex with their schoolmates was one of the ways they could spare their time especially in the villages where there was nothing much for school children to do.

[ I organized a student group to create community newspapers in order for them to have extra activities after school or during school holiday. ]

[ With the community newspaper group students aged between 14-16 years old ]

Another factor was that there was not proper sex education at school or at home. In most of the other African countries, conservative attitudes and traditional values tended to be the norm and adults were not open to talking about sex or the idea of sex before marriage. I found this very ironic, but as a foreign woman coming from a different country, It was also not easy for me to convince the adults to change their attitude and mind. 

This means young children don't get the education they need to make informed sexual choices. The use of contraceptives was also very low which could reduce teenage pregnancy and prevent them from any future consequences such as school drop-out or HIV/AIDS infection.

What can be done to reduce the number of pregnancies and its consequences?

Most of all, I believe a comprehensive and age-appropriate sexuality education is the key both from school and home. It should also be made available to adolescents and youth, from the earliest age of education. This can be a challenge for a country like Lesotho or other African countries to accept because of deep-rooted conservative attitudes in society.

One of the suggestions can be to adopt comprehensive curricula that provide accurate sexual health education as well as to support teacher training to expand coverage of sex education at school. However, here, we have to think about how best we could bring this in the education system considering the fact that most of the school kids lack the confidence to share sexual and reproductive health issues with their teachers. Because there is a fear of expulsion if school authorities assume students are sexually active. Instead of stigmatizing sex, it is important for teachers and school authorities to hold group counseling sessions and provide a conducive environment for youth to discuss such issues.

Alongside the most comfortable way of teaching them by telling to use contraceptives, Youth also need intensive knowledge and information on reproductive health. That way, they would be empowered to make informed decisions about their health and sexual behavior. 

In addition to this, the school re-entry programme must also be revamped to support young mothers to return to school. The role of government would be important to ensure pregnant learners to complete their schooling by their policy and legal framework. However, I believe it needs to move beyond the policy, to build acceptability and tolerance among various actors like teachers, school authorities, and parents to allow them that girl's right to education is not disrupted or ended by pregnancy or birth.