Tag Archives: Teenage pregnancies in Kenya

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Kenya not among the top countries with high teenage marriages prevalence

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Kenya does not rank highly among the counties in the whole world with high prevalence of child marriages, a United Nations Report shows. This is despite the many pregnancy cases reported for candidates sitting this year’s  Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education, KCSE, and Kenya Certificate of Primary Education, KCPE, examinations.

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), in October this year (2018) released a list of  20 countries in the world with highest prevalence of child marriage. The report shows that Niger ranks first with a 76 per cent prevalence. Central African Republic comes in second with 68 per cent, Chad 67 per cent, Bangladesh 59 per cent, Burkina Faso 52 per cent, and Mali 52 per cent.

Photo- A pregnant student. Kenya is grappling with high cases of pregnancies among students.
Photo- A pregnant student. Kenya is grappling with high cases of pregnancies among students.

South Sudan has 52 per cent, Guinea 51 per cent, Mozambique 48 per cent, Somalia 45 per cent and Nigeria 43 per cent, are Malawi 42 per cent, Madagascar 41 per cent, Eritrea 41 per cent. The top 20 list also features: Ethiopia with 40 per cent, Uganda 40 per cent, Nepal 40 per cent, Sierra Leone 39 per cent, Democratic Republic of Congo 37 per cent and Mauritania 37 per cent. The report shows that close to 700 million women alive today were married as children, and 17 per cent of them or 125 million live in Africa. Kenya is grappling with high cases of teenage pregnancies, a scenario that forced the Education Cabinet Secretary, Dr Amina Mohammed, to form a team that is probing the cases.

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Education and Teenage pregnancies- First Lady Margaret Kenyatta wants all teenage mothers to be brought back to school

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First Lady Margaret Kenyatta wants teenage mothers reintegrated into schools to give them a chance to complete their education.

She said early pregnancies should not mean a dead end to the education of girls or condemn the young mothers to misery and poverty associated with illiteracy.
The Kenyan First Lady spoke at the Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation (WCJF) in Kingston on Monday where she was the guest of honour.

She spoke to a group of teenage mothers who have successfully been reintegrated back to school through a special programme for adolescent mothers.
The First Lady is accompanying President Uhuru Kenyatta who is on a three-day state visit of Caribbean nation.

“I have fervently supported projects – such as this one, that encourage girls to stay in school to benefit from uninterrupted education despite their circumstances. I truly believe in the promise of hope that education gives to empower our girls,” First Lady Margaret Kenyatta said.

She said keeping girls in school directly lowers the rate of maternal mortality and protects young women from challenges such as HIV infections.
Using the case of Kenya, the First Lady said girls are hindered in their pursuit of education by very many barriers among them the distance between their homes and learning institutions and financial limitations that constrain many families causing young girls to stay at home to cater for their siblings.

Harmful practices such as early marriages and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) are the other impediments to girl child education cited by the Kenyan First Lady.

“We work hard to find practical solutions similar to this program to ensure the young teenagers do not drop out of school. We encourage communities to reintegrate young mothers and send them back to school,” the First Lady said adding that Kenyan needs to take lessons from the Jamaican learning model for adolescent mothers.
The First Lady who was hosted at the centre by Lady Allen Patrick, the spouse of the Governor General of Jamaica and accompanied by Sports Minister Olivia Grange said there are millions of vulnerable girls across the world who need help towards achieving their dreams in education but hardly get the opportunity and support they deserve to make them achieve their dreams.

“We all want the girl child to have a better future, yet we cannot forget that there are still girls who deserve these opportunities but never get a chance,” First Lady Margaret Kenyatta said.
She applauded her hosts for the innovative program and congratulated current students for their unyielding resilience and for recognizing the importance of education in unlocking their future.
Besides providing education for young mothers, the centre offers intensive counselling on health, family and life education, childcare training and provision of support and referral services for both men and women.

Since the inception of the facility 40 years ago, over 46,000 teenage mothers have successfully gone through the program, some rising to become significant members of the Jamaican society.
“I encourage all you girls here to make the most of this opportunity to nurture your talent and reach for the stars,” First Lady Margaret Kenyatta told the young mothers
She encouraged the teenage mothers to strive for excellence in their academic work and in developing their characters as they pursue dreams to become successful women.

https://newsblaze.co.ke/kenya-not-among-the-top-countries-with-high-teenage-marriages-prevalence/

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ICT Cabinet Secretary asks the Communication Authority to close porn sites

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Ministry of Information Communications and Technology (ICT) Cabinet Secretary, Joe Mucheru has asked the Communication Authority of Kenya (CAK) to start filtering porn sites like Pornhub . This is in a bid to curb the rising cases of teenage pregnancies in Kenya.

This comes after the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) chairman, Professor George Magoha, asked the government to block all pornographic sites in Kenya. According to Prof. Magoha, access to pornographic sites arouses sexual feelings among the teenagers thus leading to pregnancies.

“I am calling on the government agencies to use the power mandated to them to block pornographic sites,” the Professor said, this week. The increased teenage pregnancy cases has become a thorn in the flesh in the Education Sector with many students sitting this year’s exams with pregnancies and some breastfeeding.

The KNEC chair says the buck stops with the parents whom he blames for negligence. “Getting pregnant when you are not ready is a sign of moral decadence and negligence from parents. I think we, including myself, have been surpassed by the social media. So, can we start to teach these young people about their bodies?” posed Prof Magoha.

“The government is well aware that in order to harness the benefits of the digital economy and mitigate harms consequent to it, formulating a data protection framework is critical for the country. The Ministry established a Task force to develop Data Protection Bill and Policy, and this has already gone through the public participation stage,” CS Mucheru said when he addressed participants at the CIO 100 East Africa Awards. CIO East Africa is an authoritative IT magazine serving the CIO community in East Africa.

“We have seen in the recent exams in Kenya, that we actually now have a challenge with teenage pregnancies and this seems to be from the education sector that part of what the internet is bringing is that people are able to access sites they are not supposed to. What the Communications Authority should do is come up with ways to filter such content so that kids don’t access them. part of the challenge of all us is to educate our kids and parents against such content. We will be looking at ways of protecting our citizens from such content but we know you are also parents and care about yourselves and their future,” CS Mucheru added.

Already, the Education cabinet secretary (Dr. Amina Mohammed) has instructed officers at the Ministry to carry out an analysis of cases of pregnancies in schools for the last three years; 2016, 2017 and 2018.

CS Mucheru’s directive has not been received well by a section of Kenyans who say there is a little correlation between teenage pregnancies and accessibility to pornographic sites. “Only access to contraception, comprehensive sex education and Socio-cultural shifts will change Kenyan pregnancy statistics. There were countless teen pregnancies before the advent of internet pornography,” says Dr. Njoki Ngumi, a Health Care Giver in Kenya.