Institute of Development Studies
Bio
Author Biography
Linda Waldman is a Research Fellow in the Health and Nutrition Cluster, and Director of Teaching and Learning at IDS. As a social anthropologist, her research is focused on the intersections between health, poverty, gender and policy. She has researched indigenous people, farm workers and adolescence, peri-urban ecosystems and sustainability; asbestos-related diseases; zoonotic disease; and ICTs and health systems. Linda has research experience in Africa, South Asia and the UK.
Every1Mobile
Bio
Author Biography
Isabelle Amazon-Brown is Head of Programme Design at Every1Mobile, a ‘mobiles4good’ organisation working with the charitable and development sectors to implement digital solutions across education, health and livelihoods in Africa. Isabelle has designed and managed online communities for clients including the Department for International Development (DFID) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with a focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and gender. Most recently, she led on the design of a gender empowerment mobile course for Nigerian youth, an online community for Kenyan shopkeepers and a digital literacy site for South African teenage girls. She is interested in taking participatory approaches to solution design, working with end users to co-develop solutions.
Volume 48
Number 1
Published: February 13, 2017
This article explores new, under-researched genres of sex education for adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa resulting from access to the internet through mobile phones. It examines the history of developing online health information platforms tailored for youth through the experiences of digital developers and the reflections of users. Unlike traditional sources of sex education, the internet offers portability, anonymity, informality, ‘personalised’ responses, and the ability to interact with peers who are not local or part of face-to-face networks. This article draws on a literature review, complemented by qualitative and quantitative material generated by Every1Mobile in its production of online health communities for young people. We found massive enthusiasm for online sex education in Africa but little knowledge about how young people use, perceive and respond to this. We recommend that practitioners, funders and researchers invest more in understanding not only the many fantastic opportunities associated with digital sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) information, but also the interwoven contradictions, challenges and potential for misuse.
