Reproductive justice: Why half of African women can't plan their families
A woman at a pharmacy. Across Africa, countless women face significant barriers to essential SRH, often experiencing violence, shame, and coercion.
What you need to know:
- Across Africa, millions of women face barriers accessing family planning services, with some walking over two hours to reach clinics only to find empty shelves.
- Globally, 218 million women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income countries have an unmet need for modern contraception.
- MenEngage Africa Alliance and Sonke Gender Justice have launched a campaign to tackle these challenges.
She whispers her question to the pharmacist, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one is listening. When told there are no contraceptives in stock and hasn't been for weeks, her heart sinks. This scene plays out daily across Africa—women seeking reproductive healthcare in hushed tones, only to be met with empty shelves, closed clinics, and systemic barriers that turn basic healthcare into an impossible quest.
In Kenya, despite overall progress in contraceptive use, a significant number of women still face barriers to accessing family planning services. While the percentage of married women using modern contraceptives has increased, a considerable portion still experiences unmet needs, meaning they wish to delay or avoid pregnancy but cannot access contraception.
This unmet need is particularly high among young women and those in rural areas, highlighting stark disparities in access. Distance to health facilities, especially in rural areas, has been identified as a major obstacle to women accessing reproductive health services. The African Institute for Development Policy reports that some women in Kajiado County spend over two hours to reach the nearest clinic.
The challenges run deeper than distance alone. Some areas lack sufficient health facilities or a consistent supply of contraceptives, keeping women from accessing much-needed family planning commodities. This problem extends far beyond Kenya's borders—women facing such challenges across the continent now have a reason to smile if a new initiative is anything to go by.
MenEngage Africa Alliance and Sonke Gender Justice are implementing the "Act for Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR)" campaign across the Africa continent. This pan-African initiative represents a critical step towards ensuring every individual on the continent has the fundamental right to make informed choices about their own bodies.
Across Africa, countless people face significant barriers to essential sexual and reproductive healthcare, often experiencing violence, shame, and coercion. The organisations note that in the context of continuing global crises and diminishing donor funding, grassroots organisations and advocacy networks are facing difficult circumstances in maintaining services and advocating for progressive policy changes. This, the organisations note, has eroded sexual and reproductive health access.
The campaign, dubbed #ActForSRHR, has been developed from the MenEngage Africa broader SRHR Strategic Plan (2023-2027), which aims to ensure that all people, regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, or disability status, have equal access to SRHR services.
"The ActForSRHR is a critical campaign because it reminds us that SRHR is about real people, real choices, and real lives. That behind every statistic is a young girl afraid to ask questions, a woman denied care, and a young boy misinformed. Everyone deserves the right to make informed choices about their bodies, health, and future," says Sonke's Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) specialist, Jude Thaddeus Njikem.
Cost of underfunding
The impact of reduced funding extends far beyond empty pharmacy shelves. Njikem explains that the absence of funding and funding cuts not only mean the absence of contraceptives and STI prevention and treatment commodities but also means closed clinics for youth, dismantling comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) programs and important gender-based violence (GBV) response mechanisms.
The situation is further complicated by policy barriers. Many countries on the continent have a history of, or still practice, policies that negatively impact girls' access to healthcare and education. In some instances, girls are subjected to coercive testing, and if found pregnant, they face exclusion from essential services—a clear violation of their human rights.
Multi-pronged approach
The campaign aims to bring together coordinated collective actions to protect the SRHR agenda and create awareness about it. A central tenet of the campaign is the understanding that men and boys must become allies in the journey towards gender justice. Equally important is that the campaign recognizes the value of intersectionality and that this must be reflected in advocacy.
The campaign's goals are ambitious: to promote dialogue on involving men and boys in SRHR and gender equality programs, tackle stigma and silence with powerful stories, bold digital content, and social impact campaigns, advocate for equitable laws and increased funding for SRHR services, and promote dialogue on involving men and boys in SRHR and gender equality programs.
The digital strategy will be particularly important, using infographics, videos, and social storytelling to amplify the voices of individuals directly affected by SRHR policy gaps and budget reductions.
"Our hope is that in countries where access to services is not a reality, the campaign will spark advocacy for the improvement of access to services and information. The campaign is also a way of educating people through social media about what SRHR encompasses and debunking myths," says Sonke's SRHR coordinator, Runyararo Mutariswa.
The statistics paint a sobering picture of the challenge ahead. Globally, 218 million women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income countries, including those in sub-Saharan Africa, have an unmet need for modern contraception. This means they would like to delay or stop childbearing but are not using any form of contraception.
In sub-Saharan Africa, about 17 per cent of all women and 23 per cent of married or in-union women have an unmet need for family planning. This lack of access to contraception leads to a high rate of unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and maternal mortality.
The regional disparities are stark: a significant proportion of women in sub-Saharan Africa (70-80 per cent) who lack access to modern contraception live in this region. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only about half of partnered or married women have their family planning needs met with modern contraceptive methods.