Continental Story · 09 of 12
The adolescent birth map
In 2023, Sub-Saharan Africa recorded an adolescent birth rate of roughly 98 births per 1,000 girls aged 15–19 — more than twice the global average of 41 and four times that of high-income countries. This map traces where the burden falls heaviest, and why.
By African Renaissance Trust · Data: WHO · UN WPP 2024 · World Bank WDI
The adolescent birth rate (ABR) — the United Nations’ SDG 3.7.2 indicator — measures live births per 1,000 women aged 15–19 in a given year. It is a single number that absorbs a vast web of upstream realities: child marriage, comprehensive sexuality education, contraceptive access, school retention, conflict, and the simple economic question of whether a girl believes her labour can be valued outside the household.
163
Central African Republic — highest ABR in Africa, per 1,000 girls4.3
Tunisia — lowest ABR in Africa98
Sub-Saharan Africa regional rate (2023)
What the map shows
Click into the interactive map below to see every African Union member state shaded along a six-step scale from deep cream (lower ABR) to deep terracotta (higher ABR). Hover any country for a tool-tipped value. Click for a full single-country briefing including how it ranks across all the vault’s numerical indicators — useful for triangulating ABR against indicators like gender inequality (GII), urbanisation, or food insecurity.
Interactive map — Adolescent birth rate, per 1,000 women aged 15–19. Source: UN WPP 2024 / World Bank SP.ADO.TFRT.
A continental story, not a single story
The map separates into clear geographies. The high-ABR cluster sits across the Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea — Niger (145), Mali (139), Chad (135), Mozambique (153), Central African Republic (163), Angola (141). In every case the data tracks countries with very young median ages, high prevalence of child marriage, and historically thin investment in adolescent-friendly reproductive health services.
The low-ABR cluster, by contrast, runs across the Maghreb. Tunisia (4.3), Libya (5.9) and Algeria (8.7) report ABRs lower than the global average. Mauritius (19.8) and Djibouti (19.0) sit alongside them — small island economies and city-states where access to education and family planning is more universal.
A girl in Mozambique is 36 times more likely to give birth between her 15th and 20th birthday than a girl in Tunisia. Both countries are African Union member states. Geography is not destiny — but it captures the policy choices and investments that produce destiny.
Where the policy levers sit
The vault’s adolescent birth layer is designed to sit beside three other tools:
- The Maputo Protocol ratification map — because Article 14 of the Protocol enshrines a continental right to sexual and reproductive health that, where ratified and operationalised, is associated with lower ABRs.
- The Gender Equality layer (UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index, IPU Parline parliamentary representation, maternal mortality, female labour-force participation) — showing the broader gender architecture in which adolescent fertility sits.
- The Urbanisation and Food Insecurity layers — proxies for the economic stress that, across the literature, drives early childbearing in fragile contexts.
How to read the indicator
ABR is a flow indicator (births per year), not a stock indicator (girls who have ever given birth). It is also age-specific: it captures the 15–19 window only. The under-15 fraction is small in absolute terms but disproportionately associated with the most severe maternal and child health outcomes. WHO estimates roughly 21 million pregnancies occur each year in Africa among girls aged 15–19, and roughly half are unintended — itself a marker of the contraceptive-access gap.
