Pamela T Munyoro.
(News of The South) – Decades and decades, unwanted pregnancies and economic distress has led to a lot of young girls resort to any form of work in order to survive but now the game has changed as selling babies at a black market amongst African countries has become a thing.
Selling babies to traffickers now has become the fastest way of getting quick money which has less procedures and less legal terms to follow.
The driving force behind the black market is a persistent cultural stigma around infertility and most women are becoming desperate to start a family in every possible way.
Infertility is not a good thing for a woman in an African marriage, once you are married, you are expected to have a child and it should be a boy. If one cannot, you might get kicked out of your home and being kicked out is very shameful, so women are turning to anything in order to have a baby.
Kenya, Nairobi, has become one of the growing hub for baby selling on black markets.
Poverty in Kenya has become one of the major factors pushing young girls and women to sell their babies at a black market, to anyone who is willing to pay as little as 3 000 Kenyan shillings.
Kenya has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Africa and health experts say the problem has worsened during the coronavirus pandemic, with some women pushed into sex work to survive and girls losing the structure of the school system.
Some girls are opting to sell their babies because it is fast, no certificates or degrees needed and many of them they have little knowledge on the safest ways of obtaining money without having to sell their babies.
Dissemination of information on such matters is needed especially in the remote areas where they have less access to the internet and they need to be informed too.
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