Africa: Better Parenting Starts With Knowing What Works. We Tested a Project in 8 African Countries

What the report says

AllAfrica republished a 27 July 2026 analysis from The Conversation Africa by Inge Vallance of the University of Oxford and Genevieve Haupt Ronnie of the University of Cape Town on research into parenting support programmes across eight African countries. The authors said families raising adolescents may face added pressures such as poverty, unemployment, conflict, displacement, illness and climate shocks, while caregivers often have limited support.

The article reports that the researchers analysed data from more than 120,000 adolescents and caregivers who took part in large-scale programme delivery in Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The programmes were delivered through existing government and NGO services, rather than under tightly controlled trial conditions. The study focused mainly on adolescent girls and caregivers because many linked services were aimed at girls facing risks connected to violence, HIV and social vulnerability.

According to the authors, participants reported improvements after taking part, including lower levels of physical and emotional violence, reduced approval of corporal punishment, better supervision, more positive caregiver involvement, and fewer reported symptoms of stress, depression and behavioural problems. They said physical abuse scores were about two-thirds lower overall after participation, though the scale of change differed by country and context.

The programme studied, Parenting for Lifelong Health for Teens, was developed with WHO and UNICEF and first tested in South Africa. The authors cautioned that their analysis was not a new randomized experiment, so it cannot prove the programme alone caused the changes. They argued, however, that consistent findings across varied settings suggest evidence-based parenting support can be useful when scaled through routine services, including in conflict-affected areas and during disruptions such as COVID-19 lockdowns.