Namibia: Growing controversy over teen pregnancy

Ndjianje Tjiraure, 16, always excelled as a student at Ashipena High School in Katutura, Namibia's oldest black suburb. But her hopes of becoming an engineer were dashed when she fell pregnant and gave birth to a boy last November, thanks to an education policy that requires teenage mothers to take at least a year off school to care for their babies. "The authorities learnt of my pregnancy in the third month and expelled me," Tjiraure, who was in Grade 9 at the time of her pregnancy, told IRIN. "I have been told that I can only be admitted in school next year." Statistics on young mothers like Tjiraure are not available, but she is not the only casualty of the policy Namibia adopted in October 1999.