New Western Effort to Push Abortion in Africa

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

WASHINGTON, D.C. January 9 (C-Fam) A new coalition to conduct abortion research and advocacy recently launched in Africa with the goal of putting an African face on an issue that has a long Western pedigree.  However, its initial seed funding is coming from the West, specifically the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute, once a part of Planned Parenthood.

Many African countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, still have strong pro-life laws, and there remains a great social stigma against abortion.  The African Coalition for Research and Communication on Abortion (ACORCA) wants to change that.

“For a very long time, this kind of research work on abortion in Africa has been driven mostly by the global North,” said ACORCA spokeswoman Naa Dodoo, speaking on a podcast from Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters.  She wants to place “ownership, leadership, and funding decisions in African hands.”

In the past, the practices Pope Francis decried as “ideological colonization” were more overt, but in recent years, there has been a shift toward channeling Western funding, training, and capacity-building toward locally-based organizations promoting controversial issues in developing countries.

In the case of ACORCA, apart from the seed money from the Guttmacher Institute, its founding members include Ibis Reproductive Health and the African Population and Health Research Center, which collectively receive funding from such powerful Western sources as Gates, Ford, Packard, Hewlett, and Rockefeller Foundations as well as Open Society and MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.  Other partners include regional chapters of U.S.-based organizations Ipas and the Population Council and an affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

The secretariat for ACORCA is based at the Rwandan organization Health Development Initiative (HDI), which receives core support from the Swedish government as well as funding from the Packard Foundation and others.  ACORCA’s website notes that the coalition is not a registered legal entity in its own right, and its finances are kept separate from those of HDI, its fiscal and legal sponsor.

However, a look at the major sources of funding of ACORCA’s founding members reveals a patchwork of Western-based organizations and foundations, many of which have been involved in promoting abortion in Africa and other developing regions for decades.

The St. Paul Institute for Reproductive Health and Rights, which is based in Ethiopia, has as its “gold” donors the Washington D.C.-based Engender Health and the Center for International Reproductive Health Training at the University of Michigan, which was funded by a major anonymous donor to the tune of $25 million for its work in Ethiopia.

The Centre for Research, Evaluation Resources and Development, based in Nigeria, was founded with funding from the Population Council and has collaborated on research projects with MSI Reproductive Choices, one of the major international abortion groups, along with the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

ACORCA was launched on an international stage at the International Conference on Family Planning in Bogotá, Colombia this fall.  At the launch event, Dr. Onikepe Owolabi of the Guttmacher Institute tried to turn the colonialism narrative on its head, pointing to the fact that many African nations’ abortion laws were introduced during colonial rule.  However, the influx of Western funding into purpose-built organizations based in Africa with the stated goal of changing those laws is no less of an imposition—only this time, it’s happening remotely, and by stealth.

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