Africa - teenage pregnancy

The World Congress on Fertility and Sterility took place last week in Durban. A major point of discussion was the level of teenage pregnancy in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the average birth rate is 143 (per 1000) for females aged 15 to 19. The world average is 65, so putting the figures side by side clearly appears “shocking”. Is it shocking, though? In the year 2000, average life expectancy was 77.7 years in the UK, 79.4 in Canada and 79.0 in Italy, meanwhile the figures for Malawi, Kenya and Ghana were 37.6, 48.0 and 57.4. Not a very scientific comparison, I know, but enough to illustrate the point that people quite simply live a lot longer in the West. We are therefore at liberty to wait until our twenties, thirties or forties to have a child. By the time I was born, my own mother was 37 - had she been a Malawian, she wouldn’t have had much longer to live.

Of course, there are issues that need to be addressed in Sub-Saharan Africa - better sex education, protection for minors to name but a couple, but blanketing them all under the problem of “teenage pregnancy” doesn’t help anyone. From my own experiences of Africa, childhood may be short but it’s a time of innocence in a way that no longer seems to exist in our own society. The World Congress estimates that 40 percent of Sub-Saharan women will experience motherhood by the age of 18. Well, motherhood is a part of life, it’s the natural next step once you stop being a child. Guinea has the highest rate of all - with 229 births per 1000 in the 15-19 age range. The Guinean mothers I have met are so attuned to their child’s needs, so happy in their role, that I really think we need to let them get on with it and stop imposing our own Western notions of what is right, timely and appropriate in very different societal circumstances. Sometimes statistics don’t give the whole picture.