• woodrow wilson center
  • ecsp

New Security Beat

Subscribe:
  • mail-to
  • Who We Are
  • Topics
    • Population
    • Environment
    • Security
    • Health
    • Development
  • Columns
    • China Environment Forum
    • Choke Point
    • Dot-Mom
    • Navigating the Poles
    • New Security Broadcast
    • Reading Radar
  • Multimedia
    • Water Stories (Podcast Series)
    • Backdraft (Podcast Series)
    • Tracking the Energy Titans (Interactive)
  • Films
    • Water, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Animated Short)
    • Paving the Way (Ethiopia)
    • Broken Landscape (India)
    • Scaling the Mountain (Nepal)
    • Healthy People, Healthy Environment (Tanzania)
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Contact Us

NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Dot-Mom  //  From the Wilson Center

    President Joyce Banda Talks About Her Time in Office & Sensitizing African Leaders to Maternal Health Challenges

    January 6, 2017 By Schuyler Null

    Joyce Banda, Malawi’s first female vice president, became Malawi’s first female president in 2012 after the sudden death of Bungu wa Mutharika in office. From day one, maternal health and girls’ education were a priority in her administration, she tells the Maternal Health Initiative’s Roger-Mark De Souza in an interview at the Wilson Center.

    After getting treatment for post-partum hemorrhage following the delivery of her fourth child, Banda made it her mission to do more to help women facing death while giving life. As president, she focused on behavior change and improving maternal health infrastructure in the rural countryside.

    She started by working with the country’s network of traditional chiefs, she tells De Souza. They are “the custodians of tradition and culture, but…they are also listened to,” she says. Unfortunately they had little to say about childbirth, which has many taboos surrounding it in Malawi (as elsewhere). Banda appealed to the chiefs’ positions of power, telling them their help was needed and they have a responsibility to weigh in. And they responded, she says, becoming allies and “critical partners” in the fight against maternal mortality by helping to change behavior at the community level.

    Her government also worked with traditional birth attendants to help turn them into a referral network for better equipped and staffed clinics. The effort paid off with a 30 percent reduction in maternal deaths in two years and an award from the African Union.

    “A girl child who has been violated in the name of culture is not one capable of learning or competing on equal footing”

    The African Union provides support for maternal health efforts across the continent, Banda says. Its Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa appoints goodwill ambassadors and works to sensitize leaders to the number of women dying and what can be done to stop it. The initiative helps leaders “realize they are in the driver’s seat,” Banda says. “There’s no excuse for any president on the continent because there’s a critical partner sitting at the African Union supporting the fight against this unnecessary death.”

    Still, there’s more to be done, particularly for young girls, Banda says. While she commended governments for devoting resources to girls’ wellbeing, she criticized the Obama administration and other development agencies for focusing on late childhood and adolescence. Last year’s State of the World Population Report, for example, from the United Nations Population Fund, is centered on 10-year-old girls. But much of what shapes a girl’s life happens before this age, Banda says. “I can talk from today until tomorrow about what’s happening from 0 to 10.”

    “A girl child who has been violated in the name of culture is not one capable of learning or competing on equal footing with boys in the classroom,” Banda writes in an essay for the Center for Global Development, where she has been working on this issue. “Ages 0 to 10 are when girls are most vulnerable to these traditions and mindsets that inform underinvestment in the girl child.”

    We also sat down with her for a longer interview about how her life experience informs her work, balancing tradition with change, and more on reaching girls under 10.

    Sources: Center for Global Development, United Nations Population Fund.

    Video Credit: Sean Peoples and the Wilson Center.

    Topics: Africa, African Union, community-based, democracy and governance, demography, development, Dot-Mom, education, featured, From the Wilson Center, gender, global health, Malawi, UNFPA, video, youth

Join the Conversation

  • RSS
  • subscribe
  • facebook
  • G+
  • twitter
  • iTunes
  • podomatic
  • youtube
Tweets by NewSecurityBeat

Trending Stories

  • unfccclogo1
  • Pop at COP: Population and Family Planning at the UN Climate Negotiations

Featured Media

Backdraft Podcast

play Backdraft
Podcasts

More »

What You're Saying

  • Rainforest destruction. Gold mining place in Guyana China’s Growing Environmental Footprint in the Caribbean
    ZingaZingaZingazoomzoom: US cleans up. China runs wild on free rein- A lack of international compliance mechanisms to hold...
  • shutterstock_1858965709 Break the Bias: Breaking Barriers to Women’s Global Health Leadership
    Sarah Ngela Ngasi: Nous souhaitons que le partenaire nous apporte son soutien technique et financier.
  • shutterstock_1858965709 Break the Bias: Breaking Barriers to Women’s Global Health Leadership
    Sarah Ngela Ngasi: Nous sommes une organisation féminine dénommée: Actions Communautaires pour le Développement de...

Related Stories

No related stories.

  • woodrow
  • ecsp
  • RSS Feed
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Wilson Center
  • Contact Us
  • Print Friendly Page

© Copyright 2007-2023. Environmental Change and Security Program.

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. All rights reserved.

Developed by Vico Rock Media

Environmental Change and Security Program

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center

  • One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
  • 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
  • Washington, DC 20004-3027

T 202-691-4000