Prevalence, risk factors and interventions to prevent violence against adolescents and youths in Sub-Saharan Africa: a scoping review

Violence is a pervasive human rights issue with public health consequences affecting adolescents and young people. This review aimed to describe the scope of existing research on the prevalence of violence and risk factors as well as intervention programmes targeted at adolescents and youths in Sub-Saharan Africa. An eleven-year search from 2014 to 2024 was conducted for peer‐reviewed research articles, irrespective of their quality, on the prevalence of violence and risk factors as well as interventions on the types of violence against adolescents and youths in all SSA countries using PubMed, Google Scholar, Google search, African Index Medicus and direct searches of reference list of pertinent journal articles. Publications in English or translated to English were included. The methodological framework was described by Arksey and O’Malley and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines was used to describe the review. Hundred and three studies were identified across 33 out of the 46 Sub-Saharan African countries with the majority of articles emanating from Ethiopia. The prevalence studies consisted of 71 articles, sexual coercion was reported in 52 articles with a moderate number of studies focusing on physical or corporal punishment (21) and emotional violence (27). Also, the male gender was grossly understudied in the various forms of violence. The primary interventions on violence were categorized using the socio-ecological framework and the least implemented intervention based on peer-reviewed articles was at the policy level. The effectiveness of the interventions was reported in some studies while others noted no significant reduction in violence. The findings show there is a modest volume of peer-reviewed articles on prevalence of violence mostly in the dimension of sexual violence. Also, the interventions that addressed the policy level are limited and scale-up of focus on the level is imperative in SSA. In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), adolescents and youths are prone to violence due to their young age and engagement in risky behaviours. There is a need to understand the scope of research on the prevalence of the types of violence and several risk factors associated with violence. Also, to identify the various interventions that have been implemented to reduce violence against these age groups in SSA. The scoping review was done using standard guidance from the PRISMA‐ScR and the Arksey and O’Malley framework. The databases such as PubMed, African Journals Online (AJOL), Google, Google Scholar and African Index Medicus were searched. The search focussed on published peer-reviewed articles conducted in SSA and were published from January 2014 to May 2024. A total of 103 studies were found, the prevalence and risk factors associated with violence were reported in 71 studies and 32 were on primary interventions to prevent violence. More than half of the studies focussed on sexual violence while emotional violence was the least studied. Also, the female gender was more studied than the male. Several risk factors at the individual, family, community and societal levels were associated with different types of violence. The most implemented intervention to reduce violence was education and life skills at the individual level which shows that sexual and reproductive health education is still important in reducing violence. However, there is a need for the researchers to implement more strategies at other ecological levels to ensure effective prevention of violence against adolescents and youths in SSA.