Africa: support for family planning grows

African countries, generally regarded as among the world's most cautious on family planning matters, may be the most dramatic growth area for family planning projects over the next few years, according to the Kenya-based Regional Director for Family Planning International Assistance (FPIA), PPFA's own worldwide aid program. In a recent status report to FPIA's New York headquarters, L. Robinson, a U.S. citizen and former Peace Corps volunteer who recently left FPIA to join the staff of the new House Committee on Population, forecasts a near-tripling of FPIA-funded projects in 1978 - from 7 to 19. Most of the potential new projects - in Nigeria, Togo, Liberia, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone - will involve the addition of family planning services to existing maternal and child health delivery systems, with emphasis upon the training of physicians and other medical, counseling, and educational personnel. Other prospective projects include family life education for adolescents in Cameroun and Ghana, and a full-scale rural, mobile services delivery program in Tunisia. Behind these promising prospects is what Mr. Robinson sees as a quiet but deliberate move by several governments - including Sierra Leone, Togo, and Cameroun - towards accepting family planning as an integral component of maternal and child health services. The moves in Cameroun and Togo are especially significant since both are French-speaking, and traditionally "pro-natalist and somewhat hostile to family planning." The pattern of change in these and other countries tends to be somewhat slow and low-keyed, he notes; most governments "prefer not to have explicit official policies and programs, but rather to allow the gradual evolution of private services becoming an integral part of government-administered health and medical facilities." And even in some countries where government policies remain highly restrictive - Ivory Coast, e.g., where laws prohibit family planning except when necessary on medical and health grounds - many druggists stock a variety of contraceptives, all available to individuals and couples upon request. FPIA's current program in Africa, as in other regions, has 2 principal components: distribution of family planning commodities and supplies (more than $500,000 worth of commodities have been distributed in African countries over the past 3 years), and financial and technical support of service and educational projects. Of the current projects, 2 are in Egypt and Kenya, 2 in Ethiopia, and 1 in the Sudan. In one of the most advanced of these - a project in Kenya designed to introduce family life education into the nation's primary and secondary schools - project leaders recently completed and presented to the Ministry of Education a comprehensive package of syllabi, curriculum texts, and teaching guides.