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Research

Ujamaa Africa

Todd Manwaring

on Sep 23, 2026

• 9 min read

Our Recommendation

Ujamaa Africa belongs in the small group of organizations whose headline metric is not a proxy for an ultimate outcome but is one. Freedom from rape is personal security and bodily integrity, valued in itself, and Ujamaa has measured it against control groups across at least four cluster-randomized trials in four settings: Nairobi's informal settlements, three districts of Malawi, South Sudan, and the Kakuma Refugee Camp. The consistent finding is a 40 to 50 percent reduction in the incidence of rape, with 62.6 percent in the original 2013 Kenyan trial and 53 percent in the most recent dual-gender iteration. The Mulago Foundation, which underwrites on demonstrated impact rather than promise, describes results of this magnitude as almost unheard of in sexual violence prevention.

Underneath sit intermediary counterfactuals that matter on their own terms: increased disclosure of assaults, a 46 percent reduction in pregnancy-related school dropout, boys' attitudes improved and sustained at one-year follow-up, and school attendance rising from 73 to 90 percent in intervention schools against no significant change in controls. And the cost is $1.62 per student trained in Kenya, which is what makes a national scale-up plausible rather than aspirational.

The consequences of the violence being prevented include psychological trauma, damaged self-worth, and lost agency, and those are documented only qualitatively; girls describe strengthened confidence and the ability to negotiate consent, but no instrument measures it. And the entire evidence base was generated when Ujamaa trained the instructors. The organization is now scaling through 5,000 government Teacher Champions reaching 1.3 million students, which is a different delivery model, and the trial testing whether the effect survives that transfer is with Yale and not yet finished.

Ujamaa Africa's Fierce Certification score is 100/100 points based on our criteria:
✔ Has Ultimate Outcome Goals (20 pts)
✔ Measures Intermediate Outcomes (15 pts)
✔ Measures Ultimate Outcomes (20 pts)
✔ Measures Intermediate and/or Ultimate Counterfactual (20 pts)
✔ Shows Continual Learning & Adaptation (25 pts)

Donate Now! 100% Goes to Ujamaa Africa

One in three women and girls experience gender-based violence in their lifetime. In the informal settlements of Nairobi where Ujamaa began, the prevalence was high enough that the founders encountered it while running microloan programs for the caregivers of orphans, and redirected the entire organization in response.

The consequences run in two directions, and the framework's split captures both. Before the assault sit the conditions that permit it: girls who cannot identify an impending attack and have no means to resist, boys who hold norms that make entitlement to girls' bodies seem ordinary, bystanders who see and do nothing, and schools with no curriculum or capacity to address any of it.

After the assault sit the consequences that matter in themselves. The violation and physical harm. Sexually transmitted infection and unintended pregnancy. Psychological trauma. The loss of self-worth and of control over one's own body. And a set of downstream losses that compound: an assault that goes undisclosed produces no care and no accountability; a pregnancy that follows ends a girl's education; a girl afraid of the journey to school stops attending even where she remains enrolled; early marriage forecloses what remains.

The organization's framing of the solution is worth describing because it names both halves of the problem: girls are powerful and boys want to be good. The program treats the failure as one of skills and norms rather than of character, which is what makes a six-week school curriculum a plausible response to something usually treated as intractable.

The Solution

Empowerment Transformation Training, a six-week, dual-gender, school-based curriculum. The organization states that it is the first dual-gender sexual violence prevention program in the world.

Two flagship components. The girls' Empowerment Self Defense program teaches recognition of warning signs, verbal de-escalation, boundary-setting, consent negotiation, and physical resistance techniques. The boys' program, Hero In Me, addresses gender norms, consent, and bystander intervention. Both target youth aged 10 to 18 in upper primary and lower secondary schools.

The origin was deliberate rather than theoretical. The founder had taken a women's self-defense and empowerment class in the Bay Area in the 1990s, recognized that it would be life-saving in extreme-risk communities, and then spent six years developing and testing the model in Nairobi before scaling it.

The delivery model has changed fundamentally. For the first decade, Ujamaa instructors delivered the program directly. The organization now trains government teachers to deliver it, in partnership with Kenya's Ministry of Education and Teachers Service Commission, employing retired Curriculum Support Officers during a six-month setup phase in each new area to maintain continuity. Malawi runs the same structure through its own Ministry of Education.

Adjacent programming includes a combined business training, microfinance, and support group intervention for adult women, and an adapted safety decision-making mobile application for intimate partner violence.

Key Outputs

5,000 Teacher Champions trained, who have in turn reached 1.3 million boys and girls across Kenya, as of the 2024 Annual Report
Operating in 21 Kenyan counties, on track to reach all public school students by 2028, with a stated target of 6 million students
Malawi: over 120 instructors deployed across 11 districts, with a countrywide scale-up targeting 5 million learners by 2030
Additional programming in Somaliland, South Sudan, and the Kakuma Refugee Camp
Cost per student trained: $1.62 in Kenya and $2.63 in Malawi as of 2025
Ujamaa reports twelve peer-reviewed publications, including at least four cluster-randomized controlled trials
Sub-county example: 439 teachers trained across Suna East, Suna West, and Nyatike, reaching 49,210 students
Funders include Grand Challenges Canada, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, the ELMA Foundation, UNICEF, Cartier Philanthropy, Rippleworks, Wellspring, Trócaire, Weyerhaeuser, and the Mulago Foundation, which has invested $1,350,000 since 2022

Key Intermediate Outcomes

The intermediary layer is where the mechanism lives, and Ujamaa has measured each link rather than assuming it.

Skill acquisition and use. Over half of girls in the intervention group had used the self-defense skills to avert a sexual assault in the year after training. The 2023 Violence Against Women study went further, examining which resistance strategies 678 girls actually used and how they varied by perpetrator tactic, number of assailants, location, and bystander presence. That is an organization studying the internal workings of its own effect.

Boys' attitudes and behavior. Improved significantly and sustained one year later, with negative gender norms reported down 45 percent and a majority of trained boys who witness an assault intervening to stop it. The dual-gender design is the organization's most distinctive feature, and the boys' half has its own evidence.

Disclosure. The 2014 Pediatrics study found increased disclosure of assaults, which the authors note enables survivors to seek care and may lead to identification and prosecution of perpetrators. Disclosure is the gateway to every post-assault service, and almost no prevention program measures it.

Educational persistence. Pregnancy-related school dropout fell 46 percent in intervention schools, from 3.9 percent to 2.1 percent, while comparison schools were essentially unchanged (Sarnquist et al., Health Education & Behavior, 2016). This study used a matched-pairs quasi-experimental design on retrospective data rather than randomization.

School attendance is measured with a control comparison. Average attendance rose from 73 to 90 percent in intervention schools, a 17 percent increase, against no significant change in control schools.

System capacity. 5,000 government teachers trained reaching 1.3 million students at $1.62 per student, which is the number that makes a national program fiscally conceivable.

Counterfactual evidence is present at this layer, with resistance skill use, boys' attitudes, disclosure, and pregnancy-related dropout all measured against comparison groups within randomized designs.

Key Ultimate Outcomes

Sexual assault incidence is measured, repeatedly, against randomized controls, in four settings.

Nairobi, 2013 (Journal of Adolescent Health): annual incidence of sexual assault reduced by 62.6 percent over 10 months among slum-dwelling high school girls.
Nairobi, 2014 (Pediatrics): decreased sexual assault rates alongside increased disclosure.
Nairobi, 2016 (Prevention Science): cluster-randomized, matched-pairs, parallel trial in informal settlements.
Malawi, 2018 (BMC Public Health): cluster-randomized controlled implementation trial across three districts, supporting effectiveness in reducing sexual violence victimization.
South Sudan and Kakuma Refugee Camp, 2023 (Journal of Adolescent Health): a decrease in incidence in a conflict and displacement setting, which is the hardest context in which to demonstrate anything.

The organization summarizes this body of work as cutting rape roughly in half wherever it teaches. The Mulago Foundation's independent assessment is a consistent 40 to 50 percent reduction across randomized trials, with 53 percent in the dual-gender iteration.

Intimate partner violence fell 67 percent in the 2018 combined economic and support-group study, though that finding is correlational rather than randomized. A separate 2020 randomized controlled trial of an adapted safety decision-making application showed promise on intimate partner violence-related health and safety.

Continual Learning & Adaptation

The organization changed what it does in response to what it found. Ujamaa began as a direct-aid and microloan organization serving caregivers of orphans. Encountering the prevalence of rape in the communities where it worked, it redirected entirely, spent six years developing and testing a model, and became a violence prevention organization. Very few organizations turn that sharply on evidence from the field.

The model itself was rebuilt twice. The original IMpower program became Empowerment Transformation Training, described as survivor-designed and refined through expansion into Malawi, Somalia, and South Sudan. And the most consequential revision was the addition of the boys' program: the dual-gender iteration shows a 53 percent reduction against the 40 to 50 percent range of girls-only trials, which suggests the organization tested the addition rather than assuming it.

Ten years of sequential evidence, each study answering a different question. Does it work (2013, 2014). Does it work in a rigorous randomized design (2016). Does it change boys (2014, 2015). Does it keep girls in school (2016). Does it work in another country (Malawi, 2018). Does it work in a refugee and conflict setting (2023). How exactly do girls resist (2023). What do participants themselves say (2021). That is a research program rather than a collection of favorable studies.

It is now testing the thing that could break it. The entire evidence base was generated with Ujamaa instructors delivering the program. The organization has moved to government teacher delivery at national scale, and has commissioned a large-scale randomized controlled trial with Yale specifically to measure whether effectiveness and durability survive that transfer. Commissioning the study that could show your scaling strategy does not work, while you are scaling, is the behavior this framework exists to reward.

It costs its own model for government adoption. $1.62 per student in Kenya and $2.63 in Malawi, calculated explicitly to answer whether government is willing and able to pay. That is the question that determines whether the work survives the organization.

External sharing is comprehensive. Twelve peer-reviewed papers in high-tier journals, all linked and downloadable from the site, plus external evaluation by academic teams from Johns Hopkins, Stanford, the Karolinska Institute, and the University of Nebraska. The organization publishes the papers themselves rather than summaries of them.

Ujamaa Africa

Todd Manwaring

Our Recommendation

The Solution

Key Outputs

Key Intermediate Outcomes

Key Ultimate Outcomes

Continual Learning & Adaptation

Further Reading

Written by

Todd Manwaring

Our Recommendation

The Social Problem

The Solution

Key Outputs

Key Intermediate Outcomes

Key Ultimate Outcomes

Continual Learning & Adaptation

Further Reading

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