Richard Faustine Sambaiga: Adolescents, Sex and the City in Southern Tanzania
PhD-project, University of Basel (2010-2013)
Abstract:
More than half of the world’s population lives in cities. By 2030, it is expected that almost 5 billion people will be based in urban areas. A growing number among urban dwellers is young. Worldwide youth belong to one of the biggest age groups with more than half of the population being less than 25 years old. Some 1.2 billion people, one person in five, are adolescents, ranging from 10 to 19 years. They hold the key to the future, however, in many countries, youth face multiple and complex challenges. One of the main concerns is their sexual and reproductive health. Following a strength-based approach using quantitative and qualitative methods, the project looks at the interplay between sexual and reproductive health based interventions and adolescents in urban areas in Southern Tanzania. The project focuses on the interface between urban expert driven sexual and reproductive health based intervention and adolescents own creativity in dealing with health risks in urban and beyond urban areas. Interfaces between interventions and innovations will consider urban urban as well as urban-rural linkages, in order to understand and to identify interventions which work with – and not against – the inventive potential of adolescents.
Research plan
The project falls in the field of ‘Public Health and Social Life’ within the interdisciplinary programme ‘Living the City’ and explores the role of interventions in building sexual and reproductive resilience of adolescents in Southern Tanzania. It builds on the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research North-South (NCCR N-S) funded postdoctoral research work of Dr. Constanze Pfeiffer at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Switzerland and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Constanze Pfeiffer’s research project looks at sexual and reproductive health realities of adolescents and the role of social actors (including interventions) regarding resilience building among adolescents in Ilala Ilala, Dar es Salaam.
Research questions and objectives
The proposed research project aims at answering the following two questions:
• What is the interplay between sexual and reproductive health based interventions designed and coordinated by urban actors in Dar es Salaam and adolescents in the regional capital Mtwara Urban as well as in Ndanda village, Mtwara region?
• Do sexual and reproductive health based interventions designed and coordinated by urban actors in Dar es Salaam manage to initiate innovations and build resilience among adolescents in dealing with sexual and reproductive health risks in the regional capital Mtwara Urban as well as beyond urban boundaries, in Ndanda village, Mtwara region?
It aims at shedding light on:
(1) urban, expert driven SRH based interventions and adolescents own creativity in dealing with SRH risks;
(2) the role of potential interfaces between interventions and innovations with regards to resilience building among adolescent actors in urban and beyond urban areas. Hereby, urban-urban as well as urban-rural linkages will be considered.