Suicide Prevention Among Women in Africa: Why Systems That Work Matter
This September, as the world marks Suicide Prevention Month, Kianda Foundation is calling for a broader conversation about what it means to prevent suicide among women in Africa.
Suicide prevention is often framed around mental health, and rightly so. Access to mental health services, early intervention, counselling and community support are essential.
But after decades of working alongside women and girls, we know that mental wellbeing cannot always be separated from the conditions in which people live.
For a woman living in poverty, the question is not always simply, “How are you feeling?”
Sometimes it is:
How will I feed my children tomorrow?
How will I pay their school fees?
Where will the money for rent come from?
What happens when there is no work?
Who will help me when I have nowhere else to turn?
These are not only mental health questions.
They are questions of dignity, economic security, opportunity and systems that work.
Hope's story: when poverty becomes hopelessness
At Kianda Foundation, we have seen how overwhelming circumstances can affect a woman's ability to see a future.
Hope (Not her real name), one of our fanikisha beneficiaries, had been feeding her five children leftover tomatoes that people at the market would give her. For days, that was what they ate. Poverty had become more than a lack of money. It had become hopelessness. She could not see how her situation would change, and she could no longer see a purpose in continuing to live when she could not provide the most basic needs for her children. She reached a point of crisis.
In her own words:
“I was walking around looking for fifty shillings to buy poison and take my life and the lives of my five children when a friend convinced me to attend the Fanikisha class. That is what saved us!”
A friend intervened. She encouraged Hope to attend a Fanikisha class.
And that decision became part of a different chapter in her life.
Hope's story is deeply personal, but it also illustrates something we have learnt through our work: when we talk about preventing suicide among women, we must also talk about the circumstances that can strip away hope.
Suicide prevention requires us to look beyond the crisis.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 720,000 people die by suicide globally each year, with approximately 73% of suicide deaths occurring in low and middle income countries. WHO identifies a range of factors associated with suicidal behaviour, including financial problems, relationship difficulties, violence, abuse, loss, isolation and mental health conditions.
In Africa, mental health systems remain significantly under-resourced. WHO estimates that nearly 150 million people in the African Region live with mental health conditions, while the region has approximately 1.6 mental health workers per 100,000 people.
These figures demonstrate why access to mental health care must improve.
But they also raise another question:
What can we do to reduce the circumstances that leave women feeling that they have no options?
At Kianda Foundation, our answer is rooted in something we have believed since our establishment in 1961: women and girls deserve the opportunity to live dignified lives.
For us, empowerment is not simply about giving a woman a skill.
It is about creating pathways through which she can build a life in which she has choices.
A dignified life means having the opportunity to earn a livelihood.
It means being able to provide for your children.
It means having knowledge to make informed decisions.
It means having the confidence to participate in your community and economy.
It means being able to seek help when you are struggling.
And it means having systems around you that do not leave you to navigate life's most difficult moments alone.
This is why our work spans education, economic empowerment, health and community development.These areas are interconnected.
Fanikisha: investing in women's economic independence
One of the ways Kianda Foundation contributes to this vision is through Fanikisha, our women's economic empowerment programme.
Fanikisha, which means “breakthrough,” was established in 2003 to support women from low income and vulnerable rural and peri urban communities.
Over the years, the programme has supported women to develop practical skills and build stronger foundations for sustainable livelihoods.
The six month programme combines:
Business management
Business planning
Financial and business record keeping
Practical skills development
Mentorship
Life skills
Counselling and psychosocial support
This integrated approach is intentional.
We know that women do not experience their lives in separate categories.
A woman cannot simply leave her financial worries outside the classroom.
Her business affects her household. Her household affects her emotional wellbeing.
Her emotional wellbeing affects her ability to work. And her ability to work affects her ability to provide for her family. Everything is connected.
We do not position Fanikisha as a substitute for mental health care, nor do we claim that entrepreneurship alone prevents suicide. Rather, Fanikisha is one part of a broader approach to strengthening women's wellbeing and agency.
Economic empowerment can create options.
It can give women the ability to make decisions about their lives.
It can strengthen financial resilience.
It can create social networks.
It can build confidence and a sense of capability.
And it can help women move from simply surviving to planning for a future.
For someone who has spent years feeling that life is happening to them, having the tools and opportunity to shape what comes next can be transformative.
Individual resilience cannot carry the weight of systemic problems indefinitely.
We should celebrate women's strength, but we should not build systems that require women to be endlessly strong.
A woman facing extreme poverty needs more than encouragement.
She needs access to opportunity.
A woman experiencing emotional distress needs more than a reminder to be strong.
She needs someone to listen and appropriate professional support.
A woman experiencing violence needs more than advice. She needs protection and functioning systems of response.
A mother struggling to feed her children needs more than sympathy.
She needs pathways out of poverty.
This is what we mean when we advocate for systems that work.
Health systems that make mental health support accessible. Education systems that equip girls and women with knowledge and skills.
Social protection systems that support families experiencing severe hardship.
Economic systems that create opportunities for women to participate and prosper.
Community systems that recognise distress and respond with compassion rather than stigma.
Kianda Foundation's role
For more than six decades, Kianda Foundation has worked to advance education and opportunity for women and girls in Kenya.
Our work has evolved, but the underlying belief remains: Every woman deserves the opportunity to live a dignified life.
Through our schools and colleges, we invest in education and employable skills.
Through our health initiatives, we work to improve access to essential healthcare for underserved communities. Through Fanikisha, we support women to strengthen their livelihoods and economic independence.
Through our wider programmes, partnerships and community work, we seek to address the barriers that prevent women and girls from reaching their full potential.
This is not a quick fix. It is long term work.
Because poverty does not disappear through one training session, and mental health challenges cannot always be resolved through one conversation.
Sustainable change requires investment, consistency and systems that continue working even when individual circumstances become difficult.
Hope's story reminds us of why this matters. A woman who once could not see a way forward walked into a Fanikisha classroom because a friend refused to let her face her circumstances alone. Her story does not mean that every woman experiencing poverty will experience a similar outcome. It does remind us, however, that intervention can take many forms.
Sometimes it is professional mental health care.
Sometimes it is a friend who notices.
Sometimes it is education.
Sometimes it is economic opportunity.
Sometimes it is a community that refuses to let someone fall through the cracks.
And sometimes these interventions need to work together.
Suicide Prevention Month gives us an opportunity to talk about suicide openly and responsibly, to encourage people to seek help and to strengthen mental health support. But it also gives us an opportunity to ask a bigger question:
What kind of society are we building around the women we ask to keep going?
At Kianda Foundation, we believe that suicide prevention must include both immediate support for people in crisis and long term investment in the conditions that enable people to live with dignity. That means investing in mental health.
It means tackling poverty. It means educating girls and women.
It means creating economic opportunities. It means strengthening communities.
And it means building systems that work.
Because telling women to have hope is not enough. We must also help create the conditions in which hope is possible. That is the work of Kianda Foundation.And through programmes such as Fanikisha, we are committed to walking alongside women as they build not simply livelihoods, but lives of dignity, agency and possibility.
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