Although Africa is a large continent and one of great diversity, there is a cultural practice that persists, which still adversely affects millions of women and girls. Female genital mutilation (FGM) demonstrates the degree to which cultural practices can shape an individual’s personal experience. The subject is again back in the news for 2025, and we now have further evidence to try and show the magnitude of the crisis surrounding female genital mutilation.
Female genital mutilation is a serious global health issue, but it is also a tragedy that can affect physical health of women, mental well-being, social constructs, and economic development. Based on reports from various organizations (for example, UNICEF (2021), World Health Organization), this article will address the detrimental consequences on African women and girls, and subsequent impact then attitudes of FGM need to change moving forward.
What Is Female Genital Mutilation?
BC GENEVA: Female Genital Mutilation denoting all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. It has considerable cultural or social association, sometimes borne out of religion, and is often done in the name of tradition.
Culturally and socially defined, sometimes religiously, and carried out as the rite-to-passage, the female genital mutilation is the concerned social practice, where mutilation stands to ensure respect for a certain set of female sexual beliefs that presume the purity and marriageability for women and girls.
FGM usually relates to cultural and social practices, sometimes religious, and often observes a rite of passage that mutilates to secure chastity and marriageability of women and girls; that is, specializes in female sexual thanatology.
Treatment does not exist for various mutilations done, considered globally as a violation of human rights.
The latest Fact Sheet issued by the World Health Organization-WHO-in January 2025, classified various forms of FGM into four types:
- Type I: Partial or total removal of the clitoral glans and/or the prepuce.
- Type II: Partial or total removal of clitoral glans and labia minora with or without labia majora removal.
- Type III: Narrowing of the vaginal opening by any means including stitching (infibulation).
- Type IV: All other harmful procedures such as pricking, piercing or scraping.
Under anaesthesia and with crude instruments, the procedure is carried out preferentially on young girls between infancy and 15 years of age. Immediate and lifelong suffering is inflicted upon them.
Female genital mutilation-FGM prevalence in context
Africa bears the greatest FGM burden, with UNICEF(2025) reporting, 144 million girls and women had been subjected to it, with a worldwide estimation of about 230 million girls and women who had undergone this procedure. It is a 15% increase since 2016 and is mainly driven by population growth in ethnocultural communities that practice FGM.
Substantial differences in the prevalence of FGM cross-nationally. About 90-98 percent of the women aged from 15 to 49 years are affected in Somalia, Guinea, and Djibouti. Mali, with 89%, Egypt, with 87%, Sudan 87% are other countries with a high prevalence.
A recent article published in the July 2025 BMJ Global Health discusses the uneven progress: while some countries like Burkina Faso saw declines from 75% to 56% over decades, others like Somalia have seen stagnation. Real-time analysis using 2025 survey data suggests that unless intervention rates accelerate, another 27 million girls are likely to undergo FGM by 2030. Population dynamics aggravate this issue; in sub-Saharan Africa, the region of highest incidence, rapid population growth means that even with declining rates of practice, there are always more people entering the risk group.
Physical Health Effects
The short term and long-term physical effects disadvantage women and girls, fundamentally turning a cultural practice into a medical one regularly faced. According to WHO the migration of those procedures to less-than-sanitary conditions and the non-medical practitioners has exacerbated the complications associated with each physical surgery related to the ceremony.
The short-term health effects are:
1. Severe pain and shock.
2. With the increased risk of hemorrhage things can lead to death
3. Infections (e.g. tetanus) and viral transmission (e.g., HIV)
4. Urinary problems e.g., urine retention injured tissues
5. Problems with the healing of the wounds
The long-term effects are:
- Chronic pain and keloid scar formation.
Recurrent UTIs and dysfunction of the menstrual cycle. - Heightened risk of infertility and delivery-related complications such as postpartum haemorrhage and stillbirth.
Increased infant mortality.
The 2025 meta-analysis in The Lancet estimated that FGM accounts for 44,000 deaths among girls annually in fifteen African countries from infections and obstetric complications. In Mali, where 89% of women have undergone FGM, advocates are reporting increasing incidences of fistula and other childbirth horrors. The costs of treatment for fistulae sustain and burden healthcare systems. The estimated cost globally to deal with the complications of FGM is US$1.4 billion a year, with Africa accounting for a large proportion of this burden.
Psychosocial and Emotional Toll
FGM impacts more than the body; it impacts the mind. Many of these survivors deal with the chronic trauma that manifests itself as mental health disorders. A 2023 systematic review in eClinicalMedicine with supplementary findings in 2025 reported associations with PTSD, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem.
In Ethiopia, where 74% of women have undergone FGM, researchers found that survivors experienced memory dysfunctions that were linked to PTSD. Research in Senegal found that women with FGM had higher psychiatric syndromes. The psychological burden can also extend to sexual health, with pain during intercourse, diminished desire to be intimate and victims not being able to orgasm threatening to undermine intimacy and stability in a marriage.
Recent qualitative research in Tanzania and Kenya describe social isolation and stigma, based on young girls’ withdrawing from school due to pain and shame. A report by UNFPA in 2025 comments that the negative effects associated with FGM contribute to cycles of gender inequality because women who are experiencing trauma have less capacity to speak up about their rights, or the rights of their daughters.
Socially and Economically Related Consequences
The multiple impacts of FGM reach into the social dimension ultimately contributing to systematic barriers against girls’ education and rights. Within a social structure FGM further entrenches gender hierarchies, which for example makes women and girls treated merely as a purity vessel rather than as an autonomous being. In the case of communities where FGM is a pre-requisite in decisions surrounding marry, for girls who have not undergone FGM the rejection and resultant isolation would mean they will experience restrictions to their social mobility.
In an economic aspect, FGM siphons resources away from the community. UNICEF, for example, identified that FGM is associated with higher rates of school dropout as girls who experience will drop out at three times the rate of boys, ultimately leading to reduced economic opportunity for those girls. In sub-Saharan Africa, this creates lost productivity, in fact a study published in the BMJ in 2022 valued the burden of health from FGM, over three decades, at billions of dollars across the 27 countries with high rates of prevalence.
A 2025 analysis came to the conclusion that if only 10% of women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa were to abandon FGM, that could help save over 60% of the region’s $53.69 billion per year medical costs by 2050. Even nations like Gambia where the rate of FGM is 75%, could help redirect funds culled from complications of FGM away from the education or health care section of the budget, meant for infrastructure improvement for teaching healthcare outcomes for girls. Poverty perpetuates cycle – girls are often segregated into poorer households, where the FGM practiced with a higher prevalence globally mean that poor families will pass this impoverished cycle down from generation-to-generation.
Cross-border dynamics complicate matters of ending FGM: as witnessed with the Horn of Africa, families cross borders to avoid bans. However, there are examples of economic empowerment initiatives taking place, such as in Kenya, which are hopeful: educated women who are financially independent are less likely to subject their daughters to FGM.
Efforts to End FGM
Amidst the gloom, there are also flickers of hope. The UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme – which has been running since 2008 (and supported over 7 million girls and women with prevention and care services) now reports that in 2025, there were 48 million community declarations abandoning FGM in 15 countries.
Legal frameworks are growing stronger: 28 African countries, and counting, have laws banning FGM, with recent efforts in Kenya and Uganda. Grassroots movements, such as Senegal’s clubs for girls bring generations together to challenge norms. Religious leaders in Mali and Somalia are challenging the myths that associate FGM to religious practices as a means of legitimatizing the practice.
Global days, such as Zero Tolerance for FGM on 6 February are bringing calls for action to the forefront. The African Union made a call to end harmful practices, including FGM, by 2025 in the Agenda 2063, but many experts caution that far more rapid acceleration of efforts will be required; re-targeting approaches to overcome FGM will need a 27-fold increase in order to meet SDG 5.3 by 2030.
Conclusion
As Africa moves into the development phase of 2025, FGM represents an immense barrier against African women – causing suffering and obstructing societal growth. There are 144 million survivors of FGM and millions more at risk. Africa stands at a crossroads. The physical pain, psychological pain, social isolation and economic loss indicate it is imperative this practice ends. Creating this change is possible through education, community engagement, and policy shifts.
There are stories of women like those in Kenya who are survivors of FGM, and now advocate against this practice, and we should be hopeful. However we are on a short deadline – it is less than five years until 2030. Africa and the world must take action, to ensure no girl is faced with the horror of FGM. The time is short and the productivity of the future depends on this change.
