Nigeria—Youth-Powered Ecosystem to Advance Urban Adolescent Health

In Nigeria, the growing urban youth population includes an increasingly marginalized segment—adolescents who are out-of-school, unmarried, married, or underprivileged, facing high rates of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies. Unfortunately, they also face more barriers in accessing accurate, reliable health information, as traditional programs have struggled to reach them or meet their needs.

The U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Youth-Powered Ecosystem to Advance Urban Adolescent Health activity empowered young people with skills, social capital, and resources needed to realize their full potential. The program improved adolescent health by increasing access to voluntary family planning services and situating family planning within a broader, more holistic context of youth empowerment, coupled with a deeper understanding of the challenges that adolescents face.

The project reached more than 300,000 adolescents through various interventions across the TEENSMATA Youth Hubs that served as safe spaces for adolescents. The project fostered a sense of ownership and agency through the active involvement of the target demographic and in turn, empowering more than 67,000 adolescents with life skills.

The efforts of the project prevented more than 7,000 unintended pregnancies and averted more than 2,900 unsafe abortions by providing informed family planning services to more than 90,000 adolescents through youth-friendly trained providers.

Sample Activities

• Establish youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health and rights services and other social support.
• Support youth leadership training to equip teenagers to advocate for family planning and reproductive health services in local policies and budgets.
• Integrate youth-led, human-centered design to ensure that project interventions meet adolescents’ needs.
• Implement social and behavior change activities combined with youth engagement with local policymakers and private sector partners.
• Partner with public and private sector organizations to secure job training placements for poor urban youth, and run mentorship services from the youth centers.

Select Results

• Conducted formative research that explored the characteristics, interests, behaviors, and needs of urban adolescents, ages 15-19.
• Launched six sustainable Youth Hubs, through which trained providers offered family planning counseling to 116,595 adolescents in both the spoke (72,287) and hub (44,308) facilities. Among these, family planning services were provided to 96,409 adolescents. About 72 percent of the adolescents who received these services were new acceptors of family planning, and 55 percent of adolescents continued to use family planning at least one-year post-service provision.
• Reached more than 66,000 adolescents using the locally adapted SKILLZ United curriculum in Lagos and Kano.
• Engaged young people throughout project implementation, particularly by forming the youth advisory committees in Lagos and Kano.
• Trained 234 multi-cadre providers to strengthen capacity in basic contraceptive technology, respectful, youth-friendly counseling, and the commodity logistics management system.
• Strengthened capacity of 842 youth champions in social and leadership skills, who will lead youth advocacy initiatives in their respective communities.
• Successfully integrated menstrual hygiene and nutrition to adolescent programming within both states of operation (a key approach for reaching most in-need youths).
• Contributed to international, national, and state policy dialogues, technical working groups, and conferences.