Mozambique: Free Internet on Inhaca island
DW / Province of Manica, Mozambique
The SMS BIZ platform offers users the opportunity to clarify questions about sexual and reproductive health via text message.
The Mozambican government has launched the SMS BIZ platform in Manica. The new platform gives adolescents and young people the opportunity to ask questions and get information on a variety of sexual and reproductive health topics like preventing HIV/, teenage pregnancy, premature marriage and gender violence.
Sixteen-year-old student Letícia Paulino likes the programme because it helps girls clear up uncertainties about sexual and reproductive health quickly and easily.
“The advantage of the Generation Biz programme is that it addresses teenagers’ questions about sexual and reproductive health, early pregnancy and having sex while they are still children or young people,” she explains.
The project is part of a multi-sectoral sexual and reproductive health programme for adolescents and young people called Geração Biz (Busy Generation), which focuses on communication strategies to change behaviour patterns among the young.
An opportunity to ask questions
Chirleid Esmeraldo Martinho, 17, expects that the platform will help reduce the number of teenagers and young people with HIV, as well as reign in early marriages and unwanted pregnancies.
“The SMS BIZ programme was created by the government to give young people more information about their lives and sexual health, and an opportunity for young people to talk to a counsellor via SMS. You can ask a question and you will get an answer quickly,” he explains.
The service allows young people, who are often afraid to speak to their parents on the subject, to have a private and anonymous conversation with a counsellor. The identity of the people using the service remains confidential.
According to the Ministry of Youth and Sports’ Sarmento Malahe, more than 140,000 adolescents and young people have joined the SMS BIZ service countrywide, and, by 2020, over 400,000 Mozambican teenagers are expected to have used the platform.
“We hope that this project will reduce unwanted pregnancies, early marriages, and girls abandoning their education because of pregnancy. We also hope it will reduce sexually transmitted diseases and perhaps even HIV/Aids,” Malahe says, noting that HIV/Aids cases in Mozambique are concentrated among the young.
Francisca Muluana, Manica’s permanent provincial secretary, believes that the programme will be very beneficial. “A variety of information will be available by SMS, completely free. We have counsellors for the questions that are being asked, and young people have the right to an answer, whatever their concerns, perhaps sexual harassment or something else,” she says.
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