With sustained investment, hundreds more could benefit. Ending teenage pregnancy requires more than a single programme, it requires scalable systems that create lasting opportunities for girls and young women.
The Rising Girls programme has demonstrated that an integrated support system can change lives and scaling this program nationally is the defining challenge of our next decade at the Aminata Maternal Foundation. The limitation is not demand, design, or evidence it is fragmented and short-term funding structures, that prevent proven systems from expanding.
Over the next decade, the Aminata Maternal Foundation has already set a clear national ambition, we aim to reduce teenage pregnancy from 21% to 12%. Importantly, the foundations to achieve this already exist through aligned policy, clinical systems, and community-based reintegration pathways. The limitation is not demand but fragmented and short-term funding structures that prevent proven systems from expanding.
This all reflects a wider global truth, that teenage pregnancy cannot be addressed through isolated programmes. Prevention requires infrastructure healthcare systems, education, and coordinated investment that work together over time.
What is happening in Sierra Leone demonstrates what becomes possible when systems align around girls’ futures. Because no child should become a mother at 11, 13, or 15 in a world that already knows how to prevent it.