Filed under: Africa, BBC World Service Trust, Nike Foundation | Tags: Africa, BBC World Service Trust, Nike Foundation
It’s International Women’s Day today, and I wrote a piece for the BBC World Service Trust based on my trip to Ethiopia with Nike Foundation’s Girl Hub initiative.
The A-Z of sexual health in Ethiopia
An hour south of Ethiopia’s capital city, a group of teenagers huddles around a radio. They’re in a small, bright-green shack on the road to Addis Ababa, and they listen intently whilst the trucks trundle past outside. There’s a sense of conspiracy in the air. Nobody speaks until the programme finishes – and then a lively discussion breaks out.
It seems like a meeting of an underground youth movement, but it’s not. They’ve been listening to Abugida, a radio show broadcast weekly on Radio Ethiopia. Abugida means “A to Z”, and the programme covers a subject that remains taboo for many people in Ethiopia: sex.
A major issue
Sexual health is a major issue for young people in Ethiopia – despite decades of health campaigns. Rates of new HIV infections are starting to fall, but still as many as 8% of people are living with the disease in urban areas.
Teenage pregnancy is widespread: more than half of girls have had two babies by the age of 18.
“There’s so many misconceptions about sex in Ethiopia,” says Elsabet Samuel, producer of the Abugida show. “I recently met a girl who was beaten by her parents because she started menstruating. They thought it meant that she had started having sex.”
Let’s talk about it
“Conversations just don’t happen … mothers are too embarrassed to talk to their daughters, girls are shy, even friends don’t talk about it.”
The problem isn’t a lack of information – there are scores of sexual health campaigns aimed at young people in Ethiopia. The problem, according to Elsabet, is that people don’t talk about it. “Conversations just don’t happen” she says. “Mothers are too embarrassed to talk to their daughters, girls are shy, even friends don’t talk about it.”
As a result, an enormous amount of confusion and misinformation surrounds the subject. “People sometimes think that condoms are only for people who have HIV and AIDS,” says Elsabet, “or that taking the contraceptive pill makes you skinny.”
…and to be clear, skinny is a bad look in Ethiopia. To read the rest click here.
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