The Education Plus Initiative - Empowerment of Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Africa

A joint initiative of UNAIDS, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, UN Women

The Government of Uganda is the latest Member State to reaffirm its commitment to End AIDS with the high-level launch of the joint UN initiative: Education Plus Initiative on 2 June 2022. The launch was presided by Her Excellency Janet Museveni, First Lady and Minister of Education and Sports (MoES) for Uganda.

The theme of the launch was repositioning education plus within the HIV/AIDS response at the center of a resilient, sustainable, integrated and person-centered approach to health and tackling gender inequality in Uganda.

In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women (15-24 years old) represented a quarter (24%) of all new cases of HIV in 2019-equivalent to 4,500 of them acquiring HIV every week. COVID-19 derailed some of the progress made as Uganda registered an increase of 18% on reported cases of teenage pregnancies with Busoga, Bunyoro, Lango, Tororo and the West Nile region recording the highest number of teenage pregnancies. Therefore, this launch was timely to accelerate actions and investments among adolescent girls, young women and boys as agents of change to prevent HIV, reduce teenage pregnancy, early marriages, gender-based violence with access to and completion of secondary school education as an entry point.

Mrs. Janet Kataha Museveni while officiating at the launch of Education Plus Initiative highlighted that, "any effective effort designed to empower young people must start with the family. Positive parenting is what we must talk and discuss with our communities."

Mrs. Museveni noted that during the long closure of schools and economy as a result of COVID-19, 18 percent of the annual birth recorded in Uganda resulted from teenage pregnancies mostly from districts in the Busoga, Bunyoro, Lango and Tororo, and the West Nile region which recorded the highest number of teenage pregnancies.