Amani Girls Organisation (AGO)
Location
Tanzania
Sector
Gender
Type of Investment
Grant
Project Stage
Pilot
Length of Investment
2023 - 2025
Website
Investment Overview
Amani Girls Organisation (AGO) is a non-profit which has developed a unique intervention to tackle sexual violence against adolescent girls in Tanzania.
The Development Challenge
Age Disparate Transactional Sex (ADTS) is defined as sex exchanged for material support between a young girl and an older man. A product of both poverty and underlying societal gender inequalities, it carries wide-ranging consequences for young victims, including HIV, early school drop-outs and forced marriage. Today, teenage pregnancy is the leading cause of death amongst adolescent girls in Africa. In Tanzania, young girls account for a staggering 80% of new HIV infections.
The Innovation
AGO’s innovation, the Learning Initiative on Norms, Exploitation and Abuse (LINEA), uses a radio drama alongside classroom sessions aimed at both girls and men. The innovation can be deployed with other behavioural, economic and biomedical interventions to help solve this multifaceted problem. To engage young girls and men on this crucial issue, AGO’s intervention covers topics including family planning services, adolescent health and development, understanding transactional sex dynamics, and developing long-term aspirations and self-efficacy.
Our Investment
GIF provided a pilot grant of $230,000 in 2023 to support AGO to de-risk its operations and help the organisation scale, with the long-term vision of taking its programme nationwide. AGO is already engaging with government and other potential scaling partners.
Amani Girls in Numbers
Girls are more likely to contract HIV than their male peers in Southern and Eastern Africa
The percentage of teenagers who have had a child or are pregnant in Tanzania Mainland