Perspectives on agency from adolescent girls in the Karamoja Cluster in Kenya and Uganda

• In Event: From surviving to thriving: Participatory research with and for girls’ agency in marginalized communities across Africa and Asia

Proposal

This study shares insights from two years of participatory research by the Learning and Action Alliance for Girls’ Agency (LAAGA) with girls in the Karamoja Cluster along the Kenya–Uganda border. Girls described agency as the freedom to do or become what one aspires to be. They valued being akemuken—someone who actively pursues goals despite challenges. Key qualities included self-belief, resilience, goal setting, leadership, advocacy, perseverance, and economic independence. Education emerged as the primary pathway to agency, both as a goal and as a means to sustain it. Mothers and other women played vital roles in encouraging and sustaining girls’ agency. However, sexual violence, harassment, and entrenched poverty were major barriers. Poverty, in particular, limited access to education, heightened insecurity, forced girls into early marriages or transactional sex, and undermined community support systems. Meaningful change requires coordinated action that centers girls’ voices and strengthens their ability to resist exclusion, paving the way toward more just and equitable societies in Kenya, Uganda, and beyond.

Authors

• Mary Akinyi Otieno, Kenyatta University

• Christine Apiot Okudi, University of Toronto - OISE