Aid Workers Plagued by Advertisers' Dilemma: Why Prevailing Information Dissemination Tactics Have Stalled Contraceptive Uptake in Rwanda

Abstract

The age-old advertisers’ dilemma currently plagues aid workers globally: how to target the intended message or product recipients most effectively. After the Rwandan genocide wreaked havoc in the country during the early 1990s, Rwanda’s population growth rate hit a peak of 7.9% in 1998, compared to peers’ 2-3% growth rates. Given Rwanda’s high population density, resource depletion became a concern if population growth was not addressed effectively; so, President Paul Kagame partnered with international organizations, namely U.S. Agency for International Development, to implement an aggressive family planning program to increase Rwandan’s knowledge of and access to contraceptives in the mid-2000s. The program was wildly successful in increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) in Rwanda from ~17% in 2005 to 52% by 2010, yet it only increased 1.4% from 2010 to 2015. What contributed to the stall in CPR? This paper applies a Probit model and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition model using Rwandan Demographic and Health Survey (RDHS) data to analyze the change in contraceptive use from 2010 to 2015. My results show that Rwanda suffers from an information dissemination problem between government agencies, aid organizations, and Rwandan women. This paper demonstrates that if aid organizations understand how to impart information about family planning resources in a sensitive, empathetic way, promoting awareness need not be expensive to be effective. The analysis surprisingly reveals that Rwandan women are not receptive to traditional, intuitive aid channels like education and the media, but instead respond more positively to personal communication, a disconnect that must be understood to reignite momentum in contraceptive uptake.