Chimaraoke Izugbara
Biographic Data
| ID | 285698 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chimaraoke Izugbara |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chimaraoke |
| FAMILY NAME | Izugbara |
| SIGNATURE | IZUGBARA C |
| AFFILIATIONS | African Population and Health Research Center |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4908-1131 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 97 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The organization and challenges of childcare services in sub-Saharan Africa
Quality childcare is central to child development, gender equality, and economic productivity, yet childcare services (CCSs) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remain poorly understood and weakly governed. This scoping review, conducted in accordance with PRISMA-ScR, synthesizes peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2023 on the organization of CCSs in SSA. Nineteen eligible studies reveal a highly diverse childcare landscape encompassing publ…
Digitalising Africa Is Critical for the Health of LGBTQ+ Persons
Masculinity and health-seeking for human immunodeficiency virus and other sexually transmitted infections in poor urban settlements in sub-Saharan Africa
In sub-Saharan Africa, boys’ and men's health-seeking behaviours are shaped by societal attributes associated with being a man. This scoping review examines how masculinity influences health-seeking regarding Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), among boys and men in poor urban settlements. A systematic search was conducted across Google Scholar, African Journals Online, PubMed, and ProQuest for stu…
Pandemic masculinity
In studies of violence against women and children during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as in explanations of men's increased vulnerability to the disease, the concept of 'toxic masculinity' regularly surfaces. However, direct research on men's perspectives on the pandemic's impact on them as men remains scarce. Drawing on interview data on urban Nigerian men's lived experiences and narratives of the epidemic in relation to their identities and r…
Cultural competence must not leave anyone behind
“The SDGs are not God”
Gender-based violence and its association with mental health among Somali women in a Kenyan refugee camp
Background In conflict-affected settings, women and girls are vulnerable to gender-based violence (GBV). GBV is associated with poor long-term mental health such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Understanding the interaction between current violence and past conflict-related violence with ongoing mental health is essential for improving mental health service provision in refugee camps. Methods Using data collected…
Research challenges in evaluating gender-based violence response services in a refugee camp
This article presents a case study of research in Dadaab, Kenya to highlight some of the relevant challenges encountered while conducting gender-based violence research in humanitarian settings. A longitudinal mixed-methods design was used to evaluate a comprehensive case-management intervention in the refugee complex near the border of Kenya and Somalia. We present an overview of both expected and unexpected challenges during preparation and imp…
Disability, violence, and mental health among Somali refugee women in a humanitarian setting
A large proportion of refugee women seeking GBV response services have disabilities, and refugee women with a disability are at high risk of poor mental health. This research highlights the need for mental health and disability screening within GBV response programming
Young men, poverty and aspirational masculinities in contemporary Nairobi, Kenya
Building on recent calls for more focus on street-level optimism about life and the world, we address the question of ‘aspirational masculinities’ among poor urban young men in Kenya. Our data and material come from ethnographic work with young men in two slum communities in the country’s capital city, Nairobi. While acknowledging that, in their neighborhoods, ‘proper’ masculinity is constituted in traditional terms of marriage, hardiness, provis…
Women’s Education and Utilization of Maternal Health Services in Africa
There is an abundant literature on the relationship between women’s education and maternal and child outcomes, including antenatal and postnatal care, onset of antenatal care and skilled birth attendance. However, few studies have adopted the ‘equity’ lens, despite increasing evidence that inequities between rich and poor are increasing although maternal and child mortality is declining. This study examined the differential effects of women’s edu…
Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research
The Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research unites 45 contributions from researchers, sex workers, activists, and practitioners who live and work in 28 countries throughout the world. Focusing tightly on the contemporary state of sex industry research through eight carefully selected themes, this volume sets a clear agenda for future research, activism, and policymaking. Approaching the topic from a multidisciplinary perspective…
They Say Our Work Is Not Halal’
Notwithstanding the growing centrality of refugee community workers (RCWs) in the current response to gender-based violence (GBV) in the Dadaab refugee camps, they remain poorly studied. Using interview data, we explored the work-related experiences and challenges as well as GBV-related beliefs of RCWs. Whilst they demonstrated elevated knowledge of the forms and drivers of GBV in their community, some of the RCWs did not deem early marriage, fem…
What does quality maternity care mean in a context of medical pluralism? Perspectives of women in Nigeria
User priorities regarding quality care in contexts of medical pluralism are poorly documented. Drawing on group and individual interviews with women, we interrogate ideas of quality maternity care in the context of Nigeria's medical pluralism. We found complex utilization patterns for conventional, complementary and alternative maternity care services as well as ideas of quality maternity care that stress effective coordination and integration of…
Fostering political leadership for the demographic dividend in Africa
A foremost challenge to the realisation of the accelerated economic growth of the demographic dividend in Africa remains the commitment of the region’s political leadership to creating the enabling contexts to maximise the potential of its youthful population. This viewpoint considers three critical African cultural mores – the reverence-for-posterity norm; leader-as-community-proxy culture; and the elder tradition – that offer unique levers for …
Providers, Unmarried Young Women, and Post‐Abortion Care in Kenya
Young women and girls in Kenya face challenges in access to abortion care services. Using in‐depth and focus group interviews, we explored providers’ constructions of these challenges. In general, providers considered abortion to be commonplace in Kenya; reported being regularly approached to offer abortion‐related care and services; and articulated the structural, contextual, and personal challenges they faced in serving young post‐abortion care…
Indigenous and tribal peoples' health (The Lancet–Lowitja Institute Global Collaboration)
Building the capacity to solve complex health challenges in sub-Saharan Africa
Folklore, gender, and Aids in Malawi
Constructions of masculinity and femininity and sexual risk negotiation practices among women in urban Ghana
Using qualitative data gathered through in-depth interviews with women in Accra, Ghana, this paper explores narratives of masculinity and femininity and sexual risk negotiation practices among women. While women framed 'proper' masculinity in terms of stereotypical reproductive norms, they also acknowledged the fluidity and multiplicity of masculinities. Femininity was more uniformly characterised in terms of physical attractiveness and beauty, r…
Life is Not Designed to be Easy for Men’
High profile health facilities can add to your trouble
Public health discourses on safe abortion assume the term to be unambiguous. However, qualitative evidence elicited from Kenyan women treated for complications of unsafe abortion contrasted sharply with public health views of abortion safety. For these women, safe abortion implied pregnancy termination procedures and services that concealed their abortions, shielded them from the law, were cheap and identified through dependable social networks. …
The Management of Unwanted Pregnancy Among Women in Nairobi, Kenya
Objectives: This study probed both the meanings women ascribe to their unwanted pregnancies and the drivers of their choices in relation to the management of such pregnancies. Methods: Cross-sectional qualitative in-depth individual interviews were conducted with 80 women and girls in Nairobi, Kenya. Results: Gender, livelihoods, morality, marital status, and male partners exerted extensively complex and multidimensional influence on women's mana…
Men, masculinity, and community development in Kenyan slums
There is limited research on masculinity in relation to community development. Using ethnographic and interview data from two slums in Kenya and building on one of the more well-known definitions of community development, we explore men?s narratives of themselves in relation to community development. We highlight how men's cognizance of the structural and contextual constraints to the development of their communities intersected with both a feeli…
The health and wellbeing of young people in sub-Saharan Africa
A third of sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) population comprises persons aged 10-24 years. These youth are growing up in a context marked by pervasive poverty, limited educational opportunities, high HIV/AIDS prevalence, widespread conflict, and weak social controls. Published research on the broad issues that affect youth health and wellbeing in SSA is limited and centers heavily on sexual and reproductive health. In this commentary, we provide a broa…
High profile health facilities can add to your trouble
Public health discourses on safe abortion assume the term to be unambiguous. However, qualitative evidence elicited from Kenyan women treated for complications of unsafe abortion contrasted sharply with public health views of abortion safety. For these women, safe abortion implied pregnancy termination procedures and services that concealed their abortions, shielded them from the law, were cheap and identified through dependable social networks. …
Life is Not Designed to be Easy for Men’
Women and High Fertility in Islamic Northern Nigeria
Research on fertility trends in Islamic northern Nigeria has rarely sought the perspectives of the people of that region concerning the causes of high fertility in the area. Relying on qualitative data elicited from women in northwestern Nigeria, we explore their views on high fertility in the region. A principal finding is that respondents ascribed to their husbands the responsibility for high parity; these women reported deliberately giving bir…
Local erotic songs and chants among rural Nigerian adolescent males
Transethnic itineraries for ethnomedical therapies in Nigeria
Men, Women, and Abortion in Central Kenya
This article examines lay narratives about abortion among adult men and women in Nyeri district, central Kenya. The women studied do not champion or defend abortion and they do not necessarily condemn it. To them, abortion shields not merely against the shame of mistimed or socially unviable entry into recognized motherhood but more importantly against the negative socioeconomic consequences of mistimed or unnecessary childbearing and inconvenien…
Constituting the Unsafe
This article reports findings of a qualitative inquiry on representations of unsafe sexual conduct among female sex workers in Aba, Nigeria. Participating sex workers viewed their work as a form of business, a survival imperative in the face of poverty, and they generally considered it both risky and disgraceful. However, they frequently framed unsafe sexual behavior in terms of poorly remunerated unprotected sex with clients. Sex workers in the …
Who Owns the Body? Indigenous African Discourses of the Body and Contemporary Sexual Rights Rhetoric
The realisation of sexual rights remains a daunting challenge in most of sub-Saharan Africa despite the articulation of these rights in several international documents and national laws. In this paper, we highlight a possible but neglected reason why this is so. Current sexual rights declarations derive from the notion that the body, as a physical entity, belongs to the individual. However, our work in two southeastern Nigerian cultures, the Ngwa…
Gender-based violence and its association with mental health among Somali women in a Kenyan refugee camp
Background In conflict-affected settings, women and girls are vulnerable to gender-based violence (GBV). GBV is associated with poor long-term mental health such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Understanding the interaction between current violence and past conflict-related violence with ongoing mental health is essential for improving mental health service provision in refugee camps. Methods Using data collected…
They Say Our Work Is Not Halal’
Notwithstanding the growing centrality of refugee community workers (RCWs) in the current response to gender-based violence (GBV) in the Dadaab refugee camps, they remain poorly studied. Using interview data, we explored the work-related experiences and challenges as well as GBV-related beliefs of RCWs. Whilst they demonstrated elevated knowledge of the forms and drivers of GBV in their community, some of the RCWs did not deem early marriage, fem…
Men, masculinity, and community development in Kenyan slums
There is limited research on masculinity in relation to community development. Using ethnographic and interview data from two slums in Kenya and building on one of the more well-known definitions of community development, we explore men?s narratives of themselves in relation to community development. We highlight how men's cognizance of the structural and contextual constraints to the development of their communities intersected with both a feeli…
Beliefs and practices about antiretroviral medication
Interest in medication-taking as a social behaviour is growing. Drawing on qualitative data, this study interrogates beliefs and practices related to antiretroviral therapy (ART) use among urban poor Kenyan people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Responding PLWHA relied on a range of ingenious strategies to remember to take their medications but did not necessarily perceive compliance with medical instructions as key to treatment efficacy. They also…
Young men, poverty and aspirational masculinities in contemporary Nairobi, Kenya
Building on recent calls for more focus on street-level optimism about life and the world, we address the question of ‘aspirational masculinities’ among poor urban young men in Kenya. Our data and material come from ethnographic work with young men in two slum communities in the country’s capital city, Nairobi. While acknowledging that, in their neighborhoods, ‘proper’ masculinity is constituted in traditional terms of marriage, hardiness, provis…
Fostering political leadership for the demographic dividend in Africa
A foremost challenge to the realisation of the accelerated economic growth of the demographic dividend in Africa remains the commitment of the region’s political leadership to creating the enabling contexts to maximise the potential of its youthful population. This viewpoint considers three critical African cultural mores – the reverence-for-posterity norm; leader-as-community-proxy culture; and the elder tradition – that offer unique levers for …
Women and Male Partner-dating Violence in Nigeria
In this article we address experiences, understandings of and responses to dating violence among a small sample of abused Nigerian female university students. Dating violence broadly manifested in forms such as physical hurt, sexual harassment and emotional abuse in public and private spaces appears to be a male strategy for sustaining women's place within certain culturally defined boundaries. Women's views regarding their abuse reinforce the cu…
Masculinity Scripts and Abstinence-Related Beliefs of Rural Nigerian Male Youth
This study interrogates the direct perspectives of rural Nigerian male youth regarding the preventive practice of "abstinence until marriage." The study shows that norms of masculinity suffuse Nigerian male youth narratives surrounding the benefits and hazards of abstinence. Key gender norms that frame male youth views of the consequences of abstention included those that cast men as strong-willed and resolute, represent sexual activity as a cent…
Urban Women's Use of Rural-Based Health Care Services
Pandemic masculinity
In studies of violence against women and children during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as in explanations of men's increased vulnerability to the disease, the concept of 'toxic masculinity' regularly surfaces. However, direct research on men's perspectives on the pandemic's impact on them as men remains scarce. Drawing on interview data on urban Nigerian men's lived experiences and narratives of the epidemic in relation to their identities and r…
What does quality maternity care mean in a context of medical pluralism? Perspectives of women in Nigeria
User priorities regarding quality care in contexts of medical pluralism are poorly documented. Drawing on group and individual interviews with women, we interrogate ideas of quality maternity care in the context of Nigeria's medical pluralism. We found complex utilization patterns for conventional, complementary and alternative maternity care services as well as ideas of quality maternity care that stress effective coordination and integration of…
Ethnicity, livelihoods, masculinity, and health among Luo men in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya
Ethnic beliefs that link particular enactments of local customs with health outcomes may motivate the performance of cultural identity in ways that can produce critical health outcomes
Home-Based Sexuality Education
This article explores how and why parents in rural Nigeria discuss sexuality-related matters with their adolescent children. The data presented here demonstrate that parents relegate sexuality to the domain of the dangerous, unpleasant, and unsavory while speaking to their children about it. Family sexuality communications offer parents a veritable cultural space to manage and control young people's sexuality. It is asserted that many Nigerian pa…
The Cultural Context of Geophagy among Pregnant and Lactating Ngwa Women of Southeastern Nigeria
Currently, geophagy qualifies as one of the least understood human nutritional practices. This is certainly due to the tendency among scholars to view or treat geophagy as an aberration or a perversion of appetite, disregarding the cultural context within which it occurs. This paper examines the cultural context of geophagy among lactating and pregnant women, focusing primarily on the Ngwa of southeastern Nigeria. E vidence has emerged from the s…
Conceptual issues in Nigeria's gender-specific rural poverty alleviation strategy
Gender-specific strategies have become very popular in efforts to achieve the sustainable alleviation of rural poverty in Africa. However, there is growing concern that this strategy is based upon weak conceptual grounds. Based on insights gleaned from years of involvement with women-only development projects in Nigeria, the authors highlight some key conceptual challenges to this strategy and argue that unless these are overcome, these pitfalls …
Tasting the Forbidden Fruit
One of the greatest challenges currently facing conventional adolescents' sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) related research is how to make connections beyond the domain of immediate and proximate factors in order to root ASRH concerns more properly and correctly. Yet variable interconnections made at such levels hold the key to breaking the walls that had hindered a systematic understanding of ASRH issues. In response to this challenge, the …
Tasting the Forbidden Fruit
One of the greatest challenges currently facing conventional adolescents' sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) related research is how to make connections beyond the domain of immediate and proximate factors in order to root ASRH concerns more properly and correctly. Yet variable interconnections made at such levels hold the key to breaking the walls that had hindered a systematic understanding of ASRH issues. In response to this challenge, the …
Conceptual issues in Nigeria's gender-specific rural poverty alleviation strategy
Gender-specific strategies have become very popular in efforts to achieve the sustainable alleviation of rural poverty in Africa. However, there is growing concern that this strategy is based upon weak conceptual grounds. Based on insights gleaned from years of involvement with women-only development projects in Nigeria, the authors highlight some key conceptual challenges to this strategy and argue that unless these are overcome, these pitfalls …
The Clientele of Traditional Birth Homes in Rural Southeastern Nigeria
Although it is widely documented that traditional birth homes (TBHs) do more than deliver babies, little is known about the other functions in addition to child delivery, which TBHs perform. Drawing on in-depth individual interviews with 13 traditional birth attendants (TBAs) and 147 users of TBHs, we profile the characteristics and health conditions of the clientele of TBHs in four rural communities in southeastern Nigeria. We found that TBHs pr…
The Clientele of Traditional Birth Homes in Rural Southeastern Nigeria
Notions of sex, sexuality and relationships among adolescent boys in rural southeastern Nigeria
Although young people in Nigeria become sexually active at a very early age, little is known about how they view sex, sexuality, and relationships with the opposite sex. Yet knowledge of their notions and expectations regarding these issues has the potential to improve care and inform the development of sexuality education programmes. This paper reports the findings of a study which relied on in‐depth individual interviews and focus group discuss…
An intercept study of persons attending traditional birth homes in rural southeastern Nigeria
Analysing data from interviews with traditional birth assistants and their clients in rural Nigeria, this paper examines the characteristics and conditions of persons using the services of traditional birth homes. The clients of traditional birth homes mainly comprise women with little or no formal education and in low or no‐income occupations. These persons present at traditional birth homes for child delivery, abortion, family planning, STIs, i…
Transethnic itineraries for ethnomedical therapies in Nigeria
The Cultural Context of Geophagy among Pregnant and Lactating Ngwa Women of Southeastern Nigeria
Currently, geophagy qualifies as one of the least understood human nutritional practices. This is certainly due to the tendency among scholars to view or treat geophagy as an aberration or a perversion of appetite, disregarding the cultural context within which it occurs. This paper examines the cultural context of geophagy among lactating and pregnant women, focusing primarily on the Ngwa of southeastern Nigeria. E vidence has emerged from the s…
‘Ashawo suppose shine her eyes’
Current efforts to advance the capacity of sex workers to recognize and successfully negotiate the risks in their work rarely privilege their own constructions of these risks. Yet current research shows that lay perspectives and notions are critical to the success and sustainability of health programmes. Drawing upon qualitative research with 127 sex workers in Aba, Nigeria, the present paper explores sex work risks as they are constructed, expre…
The Socio-Cultural Context of Adolescents’ Notions of Sex and Sexuality in Rural South-Eastern Nigeria
Interest in the socio-cultural context of adolescents’ sexual knowledge and behaviour has proliferated recently. But the irony is that very little of this debate is informed by what adolescents themselves say about sex, sexuality, and their experiences of them. This study uses data emerging from a survey of adolescent boys in rural south-eastern Nigeria to track the influence of socio-cultural forces on adolescents’ views of sex, sexuality, and s…
Urban Women's Use of Rural-Based Health Care Services
Local erotic songs and chants among rural Nigerian adolescent males
Representations of sexual abstinence among rural Nigerian adolescent males
Constituting the Unsafe
This article reports findings of a qualitative inquiry on representations of unsafe sexual conduct among female sex workers in Aba, Nigeria. Participating sex workers viewed their work as a form of business, a survival imperative in the face of poverty, and they generally considered it both risky and disgraceful. However, they frequently framed unsafe sexual behavior in terms of poorly remunerated unprotected sex with clients. Sex workers in the …
Masculinity Scripts and the Sexual Vulnerability of Male Youth in Malawi
This study investigates contextually rich talk about sex and sexual activity among Malawian male youth. While their sexual ideologies have a potential to prompt them into risky practices, a more urgent driver of their vulnerability is their sexual scripts which constitute masculinity as very fragile and in need of constant protection, making the boys wary both of female partners who refuse them sex and of sexual practices which offer little or no…
Women and Male Partner-dating Violence in Nigeria
In this article we address experiences, understandings of and responses to dating violence among a small sample of abused Nigerian female university students. Dating violence broadly manifested in forms such as physical hurt, sexual harassment and emotional abuse in public and private spaces appears to be a male strategy for sustaining women's place within certain culturally defined boundaries. Women's views regarding their abuse reinforce the cu…
Masculinity Scripts and Abstinence-Related Beliefs of Rural Nigerian Male Youth
This study interrogates the direct perspectives of rural Nigerian male youth regarding the preventive practice of "abstinence until marriage." The study shows that norms of masculinity suffuse Nigerian male youth narratives surrounding the benefits and hazards of abstinence. Key gender norms that frame male youth views of the consequences of abstention included those that cast men as strong-willed and resolute, represent sexual activity as a cent…
Who Owns the Body? Indigenous African Discourses of the Body and Contemporary Sexual Rights Rhetoric
The realisation of sexual rights remains a daunting challenge in most of sub-Saharan Africa despite the articulation of these rights in several international documents and national laws. In this paper, we highlight a possible but neglected reason why this is so. Current sexual rights declarations derive from the notion that the body, as a physical entity, belongs to the individual. However, our work in two southeastern Nigerian cultures, the Ngwa…
Home-Based Sexuality Education
This article explores how and why parents in rural Nigeria discuss sexuality-related matters with their adolescent children. The data presented here demonstrate that parents relegate sexuality to the domain of the dangerous, unpleasant, and unsavory while speaking to their children about it. Family sexuality communications offer parents a veritable cultural space to manage and control young people's sexuality. It is asserted that many Nigerian pa…
Male youth and Voluntary Counseling and HIV-Testing
There is limited research addressing the beliefs of adolescents related to Voluntary Counseling and HIV-Testing (VCT). This paper analyzes qualitative data on such beliefs elicited from male youth in Uganda and Malawi. This tendency, we contend, is strongly rooted in the inclination of male youth to perform and validate their identities in gestures of self-certitude, imperviousness, invulnerability, and invincibility. Further, the idea of ‘not wa…
Men, Women, and Abortion in Central Kenya
This article examines lay narratives about abortion among adult men and women in Nyeri district, central Kenya. The women studied do not champion or defend abortion and they do not necessarily condemn it. To them, abortion shields not merely against the shame of mistimed or socially unviable entry into recognized motherhood but more importantly against the negative socioeconomic consequences of mistimed or unnecessary childbearing and inconvenien…
Building capacity for public and population health research in Africa
BACKGROUND: Globally, sub-Saharan Africa bears the greatest burden of disease. Strengthened research capacity to understand the social determinants of health among different African populations is key to addressing the drivers of poor health and developing interventions to improve health outcomes and health systems in the region. Yet, the continent clearly lacks centers of research excellence that can generate a strong evidence base to address th…
The correlates of HIV testing and impacts on sexual behavior
The high rate of pregnancy at first test suggests that promotion of HIV testing as part of prevention of mother-to-child transmission is gaining success. Further research is warranted to examine how and why behavior change is influenced by client- versus provider-initiated testing. The influence of different sexual partnership variables for males and females suggests that interventions to assess risk and promote testing should be gender- and rela…
Women and High Fertility in Islamic Northern Nigeria
Research on fertility trends in Islamic northern Nigeria has rarely sought the perspectives of the people of that region concerning the causes of high fertility in the area. Relying on qualitative data elicited from women in northwestern Nigeria, we explore their views on high fertility in the region. A principal finding is that respondents ascribed to their husbands the responsibility for high parity; these women reported deliberately giving bir…
Unpacking rights in indigenous African societies
BACKGROUND: Modern declarations on human rights have often proceeded without reference to the cultural content of rights, the existence of rights in African indigenous backgrounds, and the embodiment of certain key rights in the community itself. This paper is an attempt at developing an 'inventory' of rights in African cultures as a prelude to the generation both of a holistic theory of rights as well as a research agenda that can recognize the …
Sociology (42 works) · Political science (29 works) · Psychology (28 works) · Medicine (27 works) · Population (25 works) · Gender Studies (22 works) · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (17 works) · Geography (17 works) · Environmental health (16 works) · Economic growth (14 works)