Family Planning for West Africa

Before the OP's launch in 2011, only around 11 percent of women in Francophone West Africa used modern contraception like pills, condoms, and intrauterine devices, according to Track20, an organization that provides governments with data to track family planning indicators, such as the number of unintended pregnancies and the number of unsafe abortions averted due to modern contraceptive use. Adverse Conditions Pivotal to the OP's launch and future success was President Barack Obama's repeal of the Mexico City Policy in January 2009- commonly referred to as the "global gag rule," which terminated US funding to many women's health and family planning programs outside the United States. After the repeal, representatives from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the US Agency for International Development, the French Development Agency, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were able to approach the French government with an idea for a partnership to promote family planning in Francophone West Africa-an area oftremendous need "for investment and change," says Perri Sutton, a program officer on the family planning team at the Gates Foundation. [...]it can take more than a decade to see the effects of a family planning initiative, and politics moves at a faster pace. Since the OP's inception, the Gates and Hewlett foundations have jointly funded the OPCU and its meetings and events, including the first conference in Ouagadougou in early 2011.