Uganda’s Ministry of Education is now set to compose the country’s new policy on sex education after a 2016 parliamentary ban on all forms of sex ed was overturned in court last November.
According to The Economist, this development comes as AIDS continues to be a “big cause of death” in the country where less than half of young people know how to avoid catching HIV, the virus that causes that deadly disease, during sex.
The knowledge of contraception also seems to be lacking among Uganda’s youth, the magazine suggests, noting how about a quarter of teenage girls in the country are either pregnant or have already given birth. Being married before the age of 18 is not exactly uncommon for females.
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and his wife reportedly advocate against the use condoms, which they say promote promiscuity – instead, they peddle celibacy as a way to avoid contracting STDs.
The first lady has also taken a dim view of contraceptive pills, arguing that they have a detrimental effect on morals.
“People are given contraceptives to use them and do what they want, have sex, take pills, conceive and abort,” she said back in 2017, as quoted by The Guardian. “This is not our culture in Africa.”
It remains to be seen what shape the new policy is going to take, with The Economist pointing at the 2018 framework suggesting lifing the sex ed ban, which also advised teaching kids that not having sex is the best way to avoid HIV.
The framework, which only mentioned masturbation as something no one should do, and which “mentioned God 62 times and made ‘God-fearing’ its main guiding principle, as the magazine put it, was nevertheless criticized by Reverend Stanley Ntagali, archbishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda, who branded said framework as part of the “UN’s pro-promiscuity, pro-gay, pro-abortion sexual agenda."
The magazine also suggests that perhaps the authors of the new framework “might consider what has worked elsewhere,” noting how UNESCO established that teaching young people how to use condoms is a more effective way of dealing with STDs and curbing pregnancies than promoting abstinence.
The magazine does mention an issue of a somewhat different kind that some people in Uganda face, as 28 percent of married women in the country who want to use contraceptives simply cannot obtain them.