“Many things continue to hold women back, and COVID-19 has exposed fundamental flaws,” UNFPA’S Dr Julitta Onabanjo

Until August 2021, Dr Julitta Onabanjo was UNFPA Regional Director for East and Southern Africa for 8 years. She concluded her role, at one of the most challenging times in recent history, by steering the region through the ravages wrought by Covid-19. In an interview with our editor reGina Jane Jere, she discusses her hopes for the future of African women and girls.

NAW: With 23 countries under your wing, clearly that was a big mandate, bearing in mind the plethora of challenges the majority of African women still face, including health. How, in a nutshell, has UNFPA contributed to the empowerment of marginalized women and adolescent girls, who often do not have opportunities to enable them to achieve their potential?

Dr Julitta Onabanjo: It is an uphill challenge, but I always start from an area of progress, because we have made some progress and we are in a much better place.
The Nairobi Summit on ICPD25 was a time for us to take stock and to see where progress had been achieved.
And for the East and Southern Africa region, our focus has been on three transformative areas for prosperity and development in the Africa we want, one of which is to reduce maternal mortality and prevent any woman from dying during pregnancy and childbirth. We have reduced maternal mortality by 50% in those 25 years, using many initiatives, including building maternity waiting homes, training midwives, the Campaign for Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA) initiative, and better auditing of maternal death. We have seen excellent examples of progress in the region.

But one death is one death too many. So, we are not going to rest on our laurels, because we still have a long way to go.
And indeed, there are several things that continue to hold us back, which
the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made worse. And therefore, in as much as I’m always optimistic, I do feel some fundamental flaws have been exposed, not only by COVID-19 but also by other things such as conflicts and the climate crisis we are now facing.

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN OUR CURRENT EDITION AVAILABLE HERE.