The key to African teenage girls' sexual health is education and a more responsible attitude by men
YOPOUGON, Ivory Coast (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - On Rue de Princesse, the main party street in Yopougon, a raunchy neighbourhood in the Ivory Coast capital Abidjan, every second house has been converted into an outdoor bar and grill, a maquis, ready for the weekend.
On a hot, steamy Friday night, young people drink the local beer and dance to the beat of coupé-décalé till the small hours.
The neon signs and strobe lights reveal little of the transactions taking place around the dance floor.
Inside the maquis, young girls latch on to wealthy and influential men who, they hope, will look after them in return for sex, with presents ranging from smart phones to better school marks, known as 'sexually transmitted grades'.
Nina Kra, a journalist working in Abidjan who lives in Yopougon, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that poverty and ignorance have driven girls to reach such deals and persuaded even protective parents to turn a blind eye.
"Mothers and fathers see their daughters with fancy new gadgets and jewellery, but they don't say anything because the girls also pay the bills and do the shopping. It always ends in tears," said Kra, who is herself a single mother.
Some 67 percent of 15- to 19-year-old girls in Ivory Coast have had sex, second in West Africa only to Liberia with 70 percent, according to the latest government health surveys. Only 4.8 percent of them use modern contraception such as condoms.
In West Africa as a whole, 129 adolescents in every 1,000 become pregnant, the highest rate in the world, more than double the global average of 50, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Many of these young mothers are forced into early marriage to avoid stigmatisation. Some risk their lives giving birth in a region with the world's highest maternal mortality rate, others pick up diseases such as HIV.
Hugues Kone, Regional Adviser at UNFPA in Dakar, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that religious and traditional norms in the region had been challenged by secular trends of rapid urbanisation, cultural heterogeneity and the spread of mass media, with devastating results.
"Across West Africa, the expansion of liberal social values as a result of globalisation has led to a decrease in the age that adolescents have sex for the first time. In many countries, at least one in four adolescent girls said they had sex for the first time before 15," Kone said.
"However, adolescent girls are often not equipped with the knowledge needed to make healthy decisions about their sexuality and often face barriers to accessing essential services including family planning and to contraceptives," he added.
BOYS KEY TO GIRLS' HEALTH
The children's charity Plan International said in a recent funding proposal that girls' sexual health depended heavily on the actions, attitudes and knowledge of boys and men in a region where patriarchal gender norms are so widespread.
Men and boys inflict sexual violence on women, often refuse to use condoms despite the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and account for almost all demand for transactional sex, the proposal said.
Males are subject to immense societal pressure to conform to masculine stereotypes that are harmful to women - pressure from the wider community, the media and sexism in schools and institutions, it said.
The trend of adolescent girls having sex at a younger age is not likely to be reversed, but better child protection laws and educating both boys and girls about the risks could make sex safer for both parties, Plan International said.
In one of the more traditional maquis, less gaudy than those on Rue de Princesse, Kra eats grilled chicken and gives her views on what needs to change.
"Men who have money have the mindset that everything is permitted. I ask them to be human and not to abuse these girls, to exercise charity and not to forget their wives to whom they swore to be faithful," she said.
"I ask the girls to be content with what they have, and if they're ambitious, to achieve those ambitions through education and trade..."
(Editing by Tim Pearce)
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