Adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa continue to be disproportionately affected by the AIDS epidemic. Approximately 4200 adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa acquire HIV every week. In 2020, five in six adolescents aged between 15 and 19 years newly acquiring HIV in the region were girls. An estimated 23 300 adolescent girls and young women died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2020 in sub-Saharan Africa, making it the second leading cause of death of adolescent girls and young women after maternal mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. The figures represent lives disrupted and lost as AIDS remains a public health threat to survival, well-being, human rights and fundamental freedoms.
At an African Union-European Union pre-summit event, Adolescent Girls in Africa Completing Secondary School, Safe, Strong, Empowered: Time for Education Plus, speakers called for robust action to respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on girls' education in Africa.
The event, held as part of the Education Plus initiative, drew participants from the African Union, the European Union, African champion countries (Benin and Sierra Leone), the cosponsoring Governments of Finland, France, Portugal and Spain, the Global Network of Young People Living with HIV and the United Nations co-lead agencies.
The Education Plus initiative, launched in 2021 and co-led by UNAIDS, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Children's Fund and UN Women, responds to the aggravated risk of HIV infection, high incidences of teenage pregnancy, sexual and gender-based violence and early marriage as well as school-to-work transitions, by calling for the completion of quality secondary education by adolescent girls and young women in Africa. Through the initiative, countries will work to guarantee free and universal access to quality secondary education while providing a Plus package to protect health rights and deliver on gender equality and the empowerment of girls and young women in Africa.
As a high-level political advocacy drive, the Education Plus initiative rallies for accelerated action and investments to prevent HIV, centred on the empowerment of adolescent girls and young women and the achievement of gender equality in sub-Saharan Africa, with secondary education as the strategic entry point.
The pre-summit event reflected on old and emerging challenges to the education and health rights of adolescent girls and young women and the opportunity for countries on both continents to collaborate and make transformative changes.
