Sadly this harmful custom was the invisible thread linking my travels across the region. Across East and Southern Africa, young boys and girls are forced to wed long before they are physically and psychologically ready.
I say boys and girls, but it is nearly always the latter. The project I want to talk to you about today was all about gender based violence against children. Spearheaded by Save the Children, it aims to set a healthier precedent for the local youth's futures.
As of , Tanzanian women get married more than five years earlier, on average, than their male counterparts. More revealingly yet, they rarely get married to their contemporaries - unions with more than a decade-wide age gap are not rare. Their mission is to empower the local community with a particular focus on young victims of gender based violence.
I got to speak to two lovely ladies during my visit, both of whom had been married off against their will. Child marriage is usually driven by the parents' desire to receive a dowry. This lump sum of money or other gifts can make a big difference to poor families who see it as a welcome financial injection. It should then come as no surprise that child marriage in Tanzania is most prevalent among less educated, economically underprivileged rural communities. But what I found even more profound was the realisation that girls in Shinyanga are more likely to become child brides than they are to not.
The effect child marriage has on young girls was evident from all my interviews. Over the last decade, 55, Tanzanian girls have also been expelled from school for being pregnant.
