What does it take to operationalise gender transformative approaches across different African contexts?

Abstract

Africa is the second largest and second most populous continent in the world. Governed by 54 recognised sovereign states, its people celebrate multiple traditions and speak countless dialects and languages apart from those inherited by varied colonial legacies. Despite historical and ongoing debts, it has one of the fastest growing global economies and vast natural resources. Its full potential, however, is not realized due in part to the lack of progress and regression on gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights. The inertia and, in some contexts, the pushback on gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights are alarming and unprecedented.1 Thirty years after Beijing, sub-Saharan African women experience the highest rates of intimate partner or sexual violence. Of the 20 countries with the highest rates of child marriage, 15 are in Africa (WHO).4,5 There is also a pushback in terms of sexual rights across the continent, whether in terms of contestations regarding female genital cutting in the Gambia or Kenya, or further restrictions, including increased criminalisation, of those who are not exclusively heterosexual in Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Niger, Tanzania, and Uganda.