AFRICA
Ethiopia

The Population Council’s involvement in Ethiopia began in 1993 with the introduction of Norplant® contraceptive implants into the national family planning program. Subsequently, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Youth and Sport requested that the Council help the government develop and implement projects to improve family planning and reproductive health, and to support the most vulnerable  adolescent girls. The steady growth in activities eventually increased the need for an in-country presence, and in 2007 the Council opened an office in Addis Ababa.

Program Focus

In Ethiopia, the Population Council develops context-appropriate programming for adolescents, especially the most vulnerable subgroups of girls and women. To maximize its efforts, the Council partners with governmental, nongovernmental, and faith-based organizations in its programs (more).

Previous Council research among rural and urban adolescents has highlighted the vulnerabilities of adolescent girls, including married adolescents, adolescent migrants, and female domestic workers. Based on this research, the Ministry of Youth and Sport and the Population Council developed programs to address the most vulnerable groups in rural and urban areas of the country. These projects were initially tested on a pilot basis. The Council is now assisting the Ministry of Youth and Sport to scale up interventions for the most vulnerable adolescents. Large-scale programs for these adolescents are being undertaken in slum areas of Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar, as well as remote rural areas of Amhara Region.

Highlights of Past and Present Work

• Organized national workshops and disseminated Council-sponsored research and programs, including “Gender Dimensions of HIV and Adolescent Programming” (April 2007), an HIV Implementers/PEPFAR conference in Kigali (June 2007), and a press conference for Ethiopian media on HIV/AIDS programs (June 2007).
• Generated data on young people that has been pivotal in reshaping the National Adolescent Reproductive Health Policy and supporting the creation of an expanded national policy to meet the needs of those aged 10–14.
• Developed a low-cost programmatic assessment tool to collect information about adolescents being reached with information or services.
• Conducted a survey to assess problems associated with child marriage and designed a program to address the economic motives for child marriage and to provide health information and opportunities for peer interaction.
• Provided information relevant to policy formulation in areas of environmental planning, workers’ mobility, poverty alleviation, and urban development.
• Scaled up and documented a program for poor urban girls in Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar, whose members are primarily destitute domestic workers and rural–urban migrants.
• Facilitated the introduction of new contraceptive technology into the national family planning program.

Selected Projects

Current

• HIV and AIDS

  • Targeted HIV Prevention Program: Condom Promotion for Most-at-Risk Populations (3/08–2/12)

  • Preventive Care Package for People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) (5/08–4/11)

  • HIV Prevention for Vulnerable Adolescent Girls (9/06–ongoing)

• Poverty, Gender, and Youth

  • Ethiopia "Brain Trust": Building Best Practices for Rural Girls’ Programming (10/07–9/10)

  • Demographic Data for Development (8/08–11/09)

  • Leave No Women Behind: A Program to Support Adolescent Girls and Women in Rural Amhara Region, Ethiopia (1/06–12/08)
  • Biruh Tesfa: Safe Spaces for Out-of-school Girls in Addis Ababa (2004–2008)
  • Berhane Hewan: Supporting Married and Unmarried Girls in Rural Ethiopia (2004–6/09)

• Reproductive Health

  • Developmental Bible: Integrating HIV and Other RH Information into the Teachings of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (5/08–4/10)

  • Africa Regional Sexual and Gender-based Violence Network (8/06–12/08)

  • Improving Reproductive Health and HIV Prevention Among Married Adolescents in Amhara, Ethiopia (9/06–7/07)

  • ECafrique (2002–ongoing)

Completed

• Poverty, Gender, and Youth

  • Building an Evidence Base for Second-generation Adolescent Programming in Ethiopia (completed 2006)
  • Technical Assistance and Support to the Ethiopian Ministry of Health, Family Health Department (completed 2006)

• Reproductive Health

  • Mainstreaming Emergency Contraception into Ethiopia’s Public-sector Services (completed 2006)

  • National Reproductive Health Needs Assessment (completed 2006)

  • Technical Assistance to CARE International for Testing Interventions to Eliminate Female Genital Cutting (FGC) (completed 2004)

  • Evaluation of Norplant® Insertion and Removal Services in Ethiopia (completed 2001)

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See Also

• Contact information for Ethiopia

• Publications/Resources on Ethiopia
• Collaborators in Ethiopia
• "Population Council in Ethiopia," 2008 fact sheet (PDFs: A4 and letter)

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This page updated 17 June 2009

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