Kenya recorded a rise, not the promised fall, in teenage pregnancies last year, and campaigners say that failure exposes how little political attention girls’ welfare receives, a gap they are now demanding as Kenya heads toward the 2027 general election.
Girls’ issues, particularly teenage pregnancy, remain absent from mainstream political conversation despite mounting evidence of their economic and social cost.
Speaking during an X space conversation hosted by The Gender Desk on Friday, August 14, 2026, Wanjira Wanjiru, co-founder of the Mathare Social Justice Centre; Derick Kimani, who works at the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), an organization that advocates for reproductive rights through the law; and Catherine Shiundu, a disability and grassroots feminist based in Kakamega County, discussed why prioritizing girls’ development potential must shape the 2027 elections.
The panelists said Kenya’s political space remains heavily dominated by men who pay little attention to issues affecting women and girls. Wanjira Wanjiru pointed to the recent public outcry over missing children, noting that it took women organizing a protest in Nairobi’s central business district to draw legislative attention to the issue. She argued that empowering women from the grassroots to the national level is central to national progress, describing women as “the driving engine for societal progress” because of their role at the family and community levels.
Kimani cited data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics’ recent economic survey showing that teenage pregnancies, among girls aged 15 to 19, rose from 224,333 in 2024 to 232,102 in 2025. He noted that the country had set a target to reduce teenage pregnancy by 10 percent by 2025, but instead recorded an increase. According to Kimani, only about 30 percent of girls who become pregnant while in school are able to return to their studies, leaving the majority without the education needed to access skilled, higher-paying employment and confining many to low-wage or unskilled labor.
Shiundu said Kakamega County recorded the highest number of teenage pregnancies in the country in 2025. She attributed the trend to poverty; parental neglect linked to economic pressures; and children being left in the care of house help or neighbors, which she said exposes them to exploitation. She described ongoing county-level responses, including sexual and reproductive health training for adolescents, back-to-school support for teenage mothers coordinated with the Woman Representative’s office, gender-based violence education in schools, and life-skills mentorship programs. She said many of these interventions rely on non-governmental organizations rather than sustained national government investment and called for stronger public participation in shaping reproductive health policy at the county level.
Wanjira Wanjiru linked patterns of teenage pregnancy in Mathare to the area’s exposure to police violence, saying young men facing the risk of extrajudicial killing sometimes father children before they can be killed, leaving young mothers to fend for their families. She said the resulting economic pressure pushes some girls out of school and into transactional sex, deepening a cycle of poverty.
Kimani argued that Kenya’s legal framework has not kept pace with the protections envisioned in the Constitution. He referenced recent litigation over the Sexual Offences Act’s treatment of consensual relations between adolescents, which resulted in court orders directing the Ministry of Education to incorporate comprehensive sexuality education into the curriculum and directing health providers not to be criminalized for offering reproductive health services to minors. He also flagged a conflict between the Constitution and Section 61 of the Children Act, which bars reproductive health services to minors without parental consent, arguing this excludes adolescents who cannot safely approach their parents. He further noted that Kenya’s Reproductive Health Policy 2022–2032 continues to promote an abstinence-only approach and frames 21 as an appropriate age for sexual debut, which he said does not reflect the lived reality of many adolescents.
Both Wanjira Wanjiru and Kimani called for open, shame-free conversations about adolescent sexuality among parents, faith leaders, and politicians and for policies that keep pregnant girls and teenage mothers in school rather than pushing them out, drawing a contrast with Tanzania’s earlier policy of expelling pregnant students.