A Mirror of Life Improves the Health and Wellbeing of Nigerian Women & Girls

In Southwest Nigeria’s Oyo and Ogun states, complications relating to pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death for girls aged 15 to 19. Contraceptive access is limited by stigma, misinformation, and social norms that restrict women’s decision-making. And in a country where abortion is highly restricted, every unintended pregnancy carries compounded risk.

PMC developed Jolokoto (“Mirror of Life”) — a 120-episode radio serial drama — to address these realities. Broadcast on 16 radio stations across Oyo and Ogun from 2019 to 2020, with two original episodes per week plus repeats, the show was designed to build a socially supportive environment for people to access and use the sexual and reproductive health services available to them.

How the show was built

PMC’s formative research identified the key barriers: low contraceptive uptake driven by myths and misinformation, limited awareness of available clinics and services, and social norms that constrained women’s and girls’ reproductive choices. The creative team — trained by PMC in a three-week workshop in Abuja — translated these findings into storylines featuring characters navigating the same pressures and decisions facing the audience.

PMC-Nigeria worked directly with government-run reproductive health clinics in the broadcast area, including nearly 200 sexual and reproductive health service sites. The show promoted these clinics — known as “Green Dot” clinics — through the drama itself and through accompanying social media campaigns. Pilot episodes were pretested with target audiences to ensure the language, characters, and storylines were entertaining, culturally appropriate, realistic, and believable.

The impact

After the final broadcast, PMC conducted a cross-sectional endline survey of respondents aged 15 to 25 across 18 local government areas in Oyo and Ogun states. One in five young Nigerians in the broadcast area — more than 500,000 people — had heard of Jolokoto.

The data showed measurable shifts in knowledge, communication, and health-seeking behavior. In rural areas, the percentage of young people who knew where to find reproductive health clinics offering contraceptives such as IUDs, implants, or injectables nearly doubled — from 29 percent at baseline to 57 percent at endline. In peri-urban areas, that knowledge rose from 32 percent to over 60 percent.

Listeners were more than twice as likely as non-listeners to have discussed family planning with a spouse or partner in the three months prior to the survey. They were also more than twice as likely to have talked with siblings about the importance of using contraception to prevent pregnancy in the past six months — the kind of organic, interpersonal dissemination that drives lasting social norm change within communities.

The show also generated measurable demand for services. Thousands of calls to contraceptive hotlines and counseling services operated by sexual and reproductive health clinics in the broadcast zone were directly attributable to Jolokoto. And 46 percent of listeners said the program helped them achieve an improved relationship with their partners and family members.

What Jolokoto demonstrated

Jolokoto showed that a radio drama grounded in formative research, connected to real health services, and broadcast at scale can shift what young people know, who they talk to, and where they go for care. In a context where misinformation and social pressure are the primary barriers to reproductive health access — not just the availability of services — entertainment-education addresses the layer that clinical outreach alone cannot reach: what people believe is normal, safe, and possible.