Rethinking the Need for Comprehensive Sexuality Education in African School Contexts: A Collaborative Self-Study

Abstract

Even though sexuality is an important aspect of humanity, talking about issues concerning sexuality is still taboo in many communities. Different religions and colonial structures banished African sexuality rituals and rites of passage in many communities because they were believed to be pagan. This wholesale erasure of sexual traditions created spaces in which the good was thrown out with the bad. That legacy has created many challenges in modern-day society, which could be addressed by comprehensive sexuality education. Therefore, a group of master’s and doctoral students from contexts where sex talk is taboo were invited to join a funded project to conduct research on gender and sexuality in education. This paper presents a collaboration between the students and their supervisor in rethinking the need for comprehensive sexuality education in African contexts. A round-table discussion was used to generate data for this qualitative, critical, collaborative self-study. The findings highlight several societal challenges that provide a basis for the urgent inclusion of comprehensive sexuality education into curricula across schools and communities. We argue, from the findings, that maintaining the taboo status of sexuality issues does not serve anyone. It is like hiding our head in the sand even as our whole body is exposed. Thus, the study has implications for teacher education and community development projects towards equitable societies with healthy sexual lives.