A ground-breaking report on family planning has shown Nigeria as the second slowest growing country, after Mali in West Africa when it comes to the uptake of modern contraception.
This is despite over 6.5million women using a modern method of contraception and modern contraceptive prevalence rate (MCPR) growing at roughly 0.3 percentage points per year, the average rate of 69 countries in focus.
The statistics about Nigeria is contained in a new report, FP2020: Women at the Center produced by Family Planning 2020.
The report was launched today on the side-lines of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Nairobi, Kenya. FP2020’s latest report is part of the 25-year arc of progress that has lifted hundreds of millions of women and girls since the Cairo Summit in 1994.
The report estimated that the percentage of women in Nigeria with an unmet need for a modern method of contraception (married/in-union) stands at 23.7% in 2019.
Nigeria was part of the first group of countries to commit to the FP2020 partnership when it launched in 2012. Since then, the country has made steady progress toward increased uptake of family planning.
The report estimates that as a result of modern contraceptive use Nigeria, over 2.3 million unintended pregnancies have been prevented, and over 800,000 unsafe abortions and 13,000 maternal deaths have been averted in the last year alone.
In Nigeria, a woman gives birth to an average of 5.5 children in her lifetime. The population of women of reproductive age in Nigeria makes up roughly half of all women of reproductive age in West Africa.
The Government of Nigeria is working with key stakeholders to address socio-cultural norms to address family planning such as: preference for large families, religious tenets, and women’s lack of decision-making power related to sexual and reproductive health.
According to the report, governments and donors around the world are recognising the importance of family planning programs with donor government bi-lateral funding for family planning rising to US$1.5 billion in 2018. This is the highest level since FP2020 was launched in 2012.
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