Ugandan teenagers play cricket to fight early pregnancy

It`s only been a few months of training and these teenagers already know the basics of cricket.

On any given day, these girls would be out of school, working on farms, or worse, married off.

The Gabula Royal foundation in Jinja city has started the Cricket is Life program in which they are teaching young girls about the sport with the goal of preventing them from getting pregnant too early.

The teenage pregnancy rate in Uganda is at 25%, one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. While girls here have the opportunity to learn a sport that is slowly picking up, this could be a major intervention in reducing the prevalence.

“This game helps us in many ways. When you stay at home and are just working in our village, you can get pregnant. But if you come and play cricket you can`t get pregnant,” Nakiwogo Zainab, who is a cricket player told Africanews.

When the lockdown was instituted, parents didn’t know what to do with their adolescent children at home.

“This game has helped us a lot in taking care of our children. We didn`t have activities to keep them busy,” Joyce Kintu who is a parent said.

The sporting discipline was tactfully chosen to include boys as well.

Cricket alone may not be the solution to early motherhood in Uganda but it’s a start to rebuilding the confidence the girls need to dream about the future.