Giving Compass' Take:

• Family Planning 2020 discusses the growing partnerships in West Africa, where nine countries in the region are making an effort to work together to improve family planning programs.

• The collaboration and cooperation among the areas' policy-makers is encouraging and could be an opportunity for those in the development world to provide more support.

• Here are four more recommendations for achieving the goals set out by Family Planning 2020.

Family planning is a cornerstone of development. It’s a linchpin strategy for any country aiming to improve the health of its citizens, break the cycle of poverty, invest in education, grow the economy, and even cope with climate change. This is perhaps nowhere clearer than in Francophone West Africa, the home of the Ouagadougou Partnership (OP).

The OP was formed in 2011 when nine countries in the region (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Togo) decided to work together to improve, increase, and expand voluntary family planning programs in the region. The West African region has the highest fertility rate in the world and the lowest rate of contraceptive use. The OP countries recognized that family planning could be a central strategy to jumpstart their development efforts.

They achieved their collective goal of improving the overall quality of family planning programs and adding one million additional users of contraception by 2015 (they actually reached 1.3 million), and are now in their acceleration phase: aiming to reach an additional 2.2 million users by 2020. The FP2020 framework was inspired in part by the OP, and is aligned with the partnership’s objectives and goals.

Read the full article about family planning in West Africa by Family Planning 2020, via medium.com.