“She was just 13”: How Busoga’s men are stepping up to fight teenage pregnancy
“She was helpless, an orphan, and abandoned,” Mathew recalled quietly. “Her image, weak, stinking, and alone, has never left me.”
When Mathew Tenywa speaks about teenage pregnancy, his voice carries the weight of a sad memory. The 28-year-old remembers vividly the day in 2022 when a 13-year-old girl was wheeled into the hospital where he worked in the eastern Ugandan city of Jinja. She had undergone a botched caesarean section at Jinja Hospital, and by the time she arrived, she was unconscious, infected, and near death.
“She was helpless, an orphan, and abandoned,” Mathew recalled quietly. “Her image, weak, stinking, and alone, has never left me.”
The girl’s husband was a construction laborer. He couldn’t afford her treatment. Neither could her family. By the time she reached the private clinic, life was already slipping away.
“That day I realized how deeply this problem of teenage pregnancy is destroying our communities,” Mathew said. “Here was a child forced into marriage, forced into motherhood, and almost forced into death because she was poor and unsupported. It shook me.”
That memory is what drew Mathew, years later, into the Busoga Kingdom’s flagship campaign Abasaadha Ne Mpango— “Men are the pillars.” The initiative, launched by Isebantu Kyabazinga William Gabula Nadiope IV with support from UNICEF, is mobilizing especially men across the region to confront one of Busoga’s gravest crises: teenage pregnancies and child marriages.
For two days in late August 2025, Mathew joined a dozen other volunteers at Kyabazinga’s headquarters in Bugembe. They weren’t just being trained; they were being enlisted as trainers of trainers (ToTs), tasked with sparking conversations about teenage pregnancy, child marriage, and gender-based violence.
During the training, the volunteers sat through lessons on communication, facilitation skills, and the principles of adult learning. They were introduced to effective negotiation and influencing skills and guided on how to apply communication techniques in village meetings. Sessions also focused on the role of men and boys in communities, and how culture can be harnessed as a tool for social and economic transformation.
To prepare, the group rehearsed scenarios. One exercise imagined men accompanying their wives to antenatal clinics, an uncommon practice in many rural households. Another group demonstrated how a family might handle a teenage pregnancy without resorting to early marriage. In another role-play, a volunteer acted as a father trying to persuade a violent neighbor to change his ways, echoing the Kyabazinga’s call for men to become “pillars” in their homes. The aim was clear: to move beyond filling notebooks with terms like PSEA (Protection from sexual exploitation and abuse), GBV (gender-based violence), SBC (Social Behavioral Change) or “teenage pregnancy.” Instead, the trainers were being equipped with something more valuable, confidence. The ability to stand in front of a village gathering and say, with conviction, “Here is how we can do better—together—to end teenage pregnancies.”
“The best teachers are those who have lived through these challenges. We are banking on you to use your lived experiences to carry the king’s message down to the people. These trainers are our guardians of change. They will go back and multiply this knowledge in ways that top-down programs never could.”
UNICEF’s Dr. Esther Nyamugisa Ochora was more direct. “Sexual exploitation and abuse are unacceptable,” she said. “You are going to be the champions of preaching against it, and of reporting it wherever it happens in your communities.”
UNICEF’s Miriam Nagadya Lwanga reminded the volunteers that their new role was more than just passing on information; it was about influence. She urged them to step forward as leaders in the campaign for social behavior change, shaping conversations and inspiring communities. But she tempered her encouragement with a word of caution. Influence, she warned, must rest on honesty. “Always build trust and credibility,” she told them. “But never promise what cannot be achieved.”
The volunteers come from different corners of Busoga.
David Mugabi, a teacher, grew up in Mayuge, where poverty was the norm and education a luxury. “My sisters and brothers could not attend school due to poverty and lack of inspiration,” he said. “Seeing my friends get pregnant and marry at an early age, with no one to fight such vices, broke my heart.”
A scholarship eventually carried him to Busitema University, where he graduated with a degree in education. The experience, he says, opened his eyes to what one leader could do. “I want to be that change that my community needs. Being a man means being a pillar of strength, resisting the injustices society imposes.”
Nicholas Waiswa, an agricultural extension officer, believes the kingdom’s campaign offers something different: ownership and structure. “Our goal is to reduce the teenage pregnancy rate, now at over 28 percent, by at least 10 percent in five years,” he said. “It may not eliminate it, but it’s a start.”
Fred Wakibi, a veteran schoolteacher, is convinced the campaign will succeed where others have failed. “This campaign flows from the King down to his subjects. It creates a proper channel so that the message reaches the grassroots. Past programs were too detached.”
John Matende, a health worker, has spent eight years in sexual and reproductive health programs across Uganda, but until now, he hadn’t worked in his home kingdom. “When I learned about this campaign, I felt compelled to join,” he said. “Teenage pregnancy is still a pressing challenge. It needs professional expertise, but it also needs legitimacy. And we have that as sons and daughters of this soil.”
The Trainer of Trainers workshop does not end with certificates only. Each trainer returns home with a mandate: to cascade knowledge across all levels of the Busoga Kingdom that is, the chiefdom, Igombolola and Village, training the KI Empango structures to reach every community, every village, every home. They will receive further on-the-job supportive supervision to strengthen implementation of the Empango mandate with fidelity, data collection for monitoring and evaluation of the efforts and for reporting back to the Kyabazinga. They will organize dialogues, gather feedback, to similarly feed it into the Kyabazinga Initiatives-UNICEF partnership.
