Blog Post

Webinar Launch of a New Supplement on Advancing Gender Transformative Approaches in African Health Settings

The webinar explored the programmatic and operational realities of gender transformative approaches in SRMH across different African contexts.

On July 31st, the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH) and the University of the Western Cape (UWC), through the African Community of Practice on Gender and Health,co-hosted a webinar to mark the official launch of an IDRC-funded special supplement in the African Journal of Reproductive Health. The supplement featured eight peer-reviewed articles authored by members of the Gender Transformation for Africa (GTA) cohort. This joint initiative represents a critical premise for the consolidation of scholarship to strengthen knowledge, evidence base, and efforts for operationalising gender transformative approaches (GTAs) in Sexual, Reproductive, and Maternal Health (SRMH) across diverse African contexts.

While the past decade has witnessed a gradual growth of academic output on GTAs in Africa - with only 52 relevant articles identified in two major databases between 2012 and 2022 - knowledge gaps deeply rooted in colonial and structural imbalances persist in literature, especially on gender transformative work in Africa. As such, the initial scoping review revealed:  

  • Consistent disconnect between theoretical engagement and lived socio-political realities
  • Persistent geographical and authorship imbalances in published studies (mainly non-Africans leading or writing about Africa)
  • Constrained diversity of theoretical frameworks, with limited engagement with intersectionality, justice, feminist analysis, or critiques of patriarchy.

Compounding these issues, less than 10% of documented research funding originates from African sources, raising important questions about the ownership and sustainability of research in this field, the extent to which scholars and institutions are able to exercise autonomy over priorities, and the structural conditions under which African gender transformation scholarship is produced, legitimised, and disseminated.

Spotlighting case studies of the integration of gender transformative approaches in health programs and services, panellists mapped the complexities and opportunities of operationalising GTAs through three interconnected thematic lenses:

1 | Co-Designing and Co-Producing Gender Transformative Approaches

Chinazom Ekwueme and Lauren Wallace presented insights on the importance and complexities of co-designing and co-producing gender transformative approaches and interventions. The authors explored participatory, context-sensitive methodologies and emphasised the necessity of engaging a broad spectrum of stakeholders in the design and implementation of interventions, such as adolescents in West Africa, who are usually apprehended as recipients, not active contributors, of health programs concerning them. This first panel further underscored the importance of understanding sociocultural norms, navigating mistrust toward external actors promoting sexual health education, and using innovative tools - such as arts-based approaches - to elicit context-sensitive and culturally grounded insights on SRHR issues. Spotlighting successful participatory interventions in Nigeria, Ghana, Niger, and Burkina Faso, the authors demonstrated how co-designing influenced government buy-in for training and facilitated integration into national adolescent well-being programmes.

2 | Frontline and Community-Based Implementation

Witness Alfonso and Colleen Wagner shared insights from their papers in which they investigate the roles, capacities, and strategies of peer facilitators and community health workers in implementing and sustaining GTAs at the community level in South Africa and Malawi. Their findings highlighted that GTAs not only shift service delivery practices but also foster critical self-reflection among providers, often challenging deeply entrenched patriarchal beliefs and harmful masculinities rooted in colonial and apartheid legacies. This pivotal role of community health workers and peer facilitators as both programmatic implementers and agents of change leads to improvements in terms of quality of care and support that adolescent mothers receive, creating a more inclusive and equitable environment. However, as peer facilitators frequently juggle multiple roles with insufficient institutional support, the authors stressed how sustained capacity strengthening, mentoring, and the creation of supportive, debriefing-inclined policy environments were vital to maintaining comprehensive and active engagement, as well as sustained facilitator well-being.

3 | Engaging Men While Safeguarding Women’s Autonomy

In contexts where patriarchal norms strongly shape decisions about maternal health, Mat Lowe and Abdoul M. Nouhou explored balanced strategies to engage men while carefully safeguarding women’s autonomy. Efforts in The Gambia and Niger sought to move beyond surface-level male inclusion toward transformative shifts in existing gender norms, enabling men to share power and responsibility for birth preparedness, complication readiness, and broader caregiving roles. Both speakers emphasised the necessity of balancing engagement with respect for women’s decision-making power and mobilising community leaders as catalysts of normative changes.

Emphasising the need for a sustained, systemic, collaborative, African-led agenda for gender transformative health research and programming, the discussions also served as a platform for the formulation of recommendations:

  • Strengthening African scholarly leadership through mentorship, training, and equitable authorship practices.
  • Securing systemic, sustainable, intersectional funding streams - including greater African investment - to move beyond the individual project model.
  • Building cross-sectoral networks to bridge silos and embed evidence into policy and practice at both national and regional levels.
  • Centring indigenous and community-based knowledge alongside formal research to ensure interventions remain relevant and culturally resonant

Speakers reiterated that while progress is being made, “the work is just beginning”. As GTAs are not merely instrumental technical interventions, but socially and politically contested processes influenced by power relations and participatory practices, achieving lasting gender transformation in SRMH demands collective endeavours, advocacy, and sustained efforts to confront deeply entrenched systems of inequality and realise truly inclusive, gender-equitable health systems. 

Suggested citation: "Webinar Launch of a New Supplement on Advancing Gender Transformative Approaches in African Health Settings," UNU-IIGH (blog), 2025-08-28, 2025, https://unu.edu/iigh/blog-post/webinar-launch-new-supplement-advancing-gender-transformative-approaches-african.