Sexual and reproductive education and the empowerment of young women and girls in Africa: progress, challenges and way forward

Patronella Chiedza Madzimure, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)

The right to education for all is well established in international conventions. Despite all these efforts to achieve universal education, current statistics show that girls and young women account for the majority of out of school children and those that are illiterate. Specifically, statistics show that the number of children out of school in sub Saharan Africa has remained more than 30 million over the past five years. Of this total, more than 50% are girls. One of the major barriers to access education by girls is inadequate sexual reproductive health (SRH) education in African schools. Research shows that inadequate sexual reproductive health education leads to negative health outcomes which in turn result in negative educational outcomes This paper intends to utilize evidence from selected countries in Africa to review the current efforts on SRH, challenges being faced and propose ways to improve effectiveness of programmes on SRH in Africa.