Multipartnership and condom use among adolescents in four sub-Saharan African countries

Sub-Saharan Africa is not only the most affected region of the world by HIV/AIDS, but also the setting where the epidemic among adolescents is the fastest growing. Multiple sexual partners and lack of condom use remain two of the most important risk factors of HIV spread among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa, yet research on this issue is limited.
Using data from nationally-representative survey of adolescents, this study examines the simultaneous effects of individual, socio-economic and contextual factors on multiple sexual partners and consistent condom use among adolescent of 12-19 years old in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda. Findings from bivariate probit models show that the two most important factors associated with protective behaviors are formal education and parental monitoring, with adolescents who reported high parental control being less likely to have had multiple sexual partners and more likely to have used condom consistently than adolescents who reported lower levels of parental control. In terms of policy and programmatic implications, this result is very important and suggests that parents’ influence over their children’s behavior, widely assumed to have declined, remains both important and pertinent to reproductive health interventions to reduce the vulnerability of adolescents to HIV and STIs.