By Frank Kamuntu
The Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) Uganda in partnership with Brookings Institute has today hosted the Learning & Action Alliance for Girls’ Agency (LAAGA) to disseminate research findings on the marginalized girls in the Karamoja subregion in northeastern Uganda.
Ms. Christine Apiot, Vice-Chairperson of the FAWE Uganda Board, an Echidna Global Scholar at the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institute was the lead researcher. She is also a member LAAGA. Disseminating the research findings, Ms Christine Apiot at an event held at Forest Cottages in Kampala on Thursday, hailed all the partner organizations for their support to research on the girl’s agency, and empowerment of the girl child.
In her remarks, Ms Jenn O’Donoghue from the Center for Universal Education shared that using Girl-Centered Methodologies developed collectively, LAAGA is currently concluding the first round of research in four marginalized communities in Bangladesh, along the Kenya/Uganda border, in Vietnam, and in Zimbabwe.
She noted that this research engaged adolescent girls in the Karamoja Cluster, cross-border region comprising southwest Ethiopia, northwest Kenya, southeast South Sudan and northeast Uganda, occupied by at least 13 pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities with ethnic, linguistic and cultural similarities.
”As most of the Karamoja territory is in Kenya while the majority of the Karamojong people live in Uganda, this case focuses on the Karamojong communities straddling Uganda and Kenya, specifically in the Karamoja Sub-region of Uganda and the Loima Sub-County of Turkana County, Kenya,” said Ms Apiot adding; ”The principal research question of this research was: What does agency look like for girls between 10-19 years old in the Karamoja Cluster of Kenya and Uganda?”
She said the study engaged adolescent girls ages 14-19 enrolled in secondary schools in Kenya and Uganda.
”We’ve delved into critical questions surrounding girls’ agency.What exactly does “agency” entail? How does it vary by context? Who gets to define it? When we speak of “girls,” which girls, and for what reasons? And most importantly, how can we adapt research and policy to include girls’ voices, perspectives, and lived experiences in our research processes,” added Ms Apiot.
On why the girls’ agency matters, Ms Apiot explained that for adolescent girls worldwide, the agency is a practical issue rather than a theoretical concept.
”Every day these girls make conscious decisions about their lives and the future, while they navigate larger social structures and power relations impacted by class, religion, race, and gender, among other factors. Accounting for this daily struggle is vital to improving learning opportunities and life outcomes for girls and their communities. Yet the agency of young people, especially that of girls and young women living in the most marginalized contexts, is often misunderstood, unrecognized, underdeveloped, and/or actively stifled,” added Ms Apiot.
In the findings of this research study, it was revealed that the girls who participated in this research easily understood the idea of agency, defining it as the ability to be free to do what one wants to do or be what one wants to be and to identify goals and be able to take action to achieve them against all odds.
The research recommended that in the Karamoja Cluster, the community is quite alive to issues of gender.
”While often categorized as a “Western concept”, girls’ agency is not a new concept to the Karamojong. The community has a local name for agency, a word only used when referring to brave and hardworking women,” said Ms Apiot adding that a localized framework for strengthening agency will be easy to develop as the community is quite clear on the individual attributes (knowledge, skills, and attitudes/beliefs) that are necessary for girls to exercise agency.
She further noted that adversity has forced women to become resilient to survive. “Important to explore is the distinction between agency and survival, and how agency is a spectrum related to the material conditions that surround women and girls.”
Among those who attended the event were female students from Abim Secondary School, who urged the government to formulate harsh policies that can curb rampant teenage pregnancies that have swept through northern Uganda.
Also, these students called for government’s swift intervention against insecurity, which they say has left several of their guardians dead and their economic activities shattered.
More About FAWE Uganda
FAWE Uganda is a non-governmental organization founded in 1997 with the goal to accelerate female participation in education in order to close the gender gap within the education system at all levels in Uganda. FAWE Uganda is part of the larger FAWE network, which operates in 34 African countries. For more information visit www.faweuganda.org.
About LAAGA
LAAGA is a community of practice composed of 23 leaders from 18 countries across Africa, America, Asia, and the Middle East, and the Center for Universal at The Brookings Institution (USA).
LAAGA is guided by a vision of a world that values the knowledge and dignity of girls and young women, listens to their voices, and supports them in taking action to shape their own lives and those of their communities.
About Brookings
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to conduct in-depth, nonpartisan research to improve policy and governance at local, national, and global levels.
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