Abstract:
Tanzania is among of the African countries with high fertility rate and a huge unmet need for
family planning. Contraceptive prevalence (% of women ages 15-49) in Tanzania was reported
at 38.4% in 2016, Women who are not empowered are likely not to use any modern family
planning methods as compared to women who are empowered; women empowerment has
been recognized as important to their access to reproductive health services, including
contraceptives. To reduce the low uptake of modern contraceptive the Government of
Tanzania embarked on USAID Boresha Afya Southern Zone Program in addressing women
empowerment to reduce morbidity and mortality by contraceptive use interventions with
strategies of asset ownership and family planning knowledge.
Broad Objective: To assess the influence of women empowerment strategy on use of modern
contraceptive in Kilolo district.
Methodology: A cross-sectional descriptive retrospective design in evaluation was carried out
among 356 women who had reached the age of 18- 52 years at the time of conducting the
research. Quantitative data was collected from the household level through multistage
sampling procedure. Descriptive statistics and Logistic regression model were used to
associate the dependent and the independent variable.
Results: A proportion of women who were using modern contraceptive before intervention
were around 55 percent while after the intervention proportion increased to around 95 percent.
Findings further revealed that women empowerment was associated positively with the use of
modern family planning. In addition age, parity, farming occupation and marital status had
positive significant effect on the use of modern contraceptive.
Conclusion and Recommendations: Women empowerment strategies have influences the
use of modern contraceptive among women in Kilolo district. Therefore, Sexual and
reproductive health programmes aiming to increase uptake of modern contraceptives in this
population of reproductive age should be empower women so as to promote the use of modern
contraceptive
