evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

Kenya's National Sanitary Towels Programme — Free Menstrual Products for Schoolgirls

Kenya · Nairobi · See the Kenya profile · See the Nairobi profile

Evidence: Randomised controlled trial Top 71% 48/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Kenya has given free sanitary towels to schoolgirls since 2011, a legal entitlement since 2017. It reaches millions of girls yearly, but randomised trials found no effect on school attendance, and audits found underfunding and procurement irregularities.

3.34 million USD
Initial programme budget (2011/2012)
444,000 girls
Girls reached at launch (2011/2012)
3.1 billion KSh
Cumulative spending (2011-2022)
8.86 million girls
Girls reached (classes 6-8) (2011-2022)
3,489 girls, 140 schools
Cluster-RCT sample size (Population Council) (2021 study)
No evidence of an effect
Effect on primary school attendance (2021)
4,137 girls
Follow-on RCT sample size (Zulaika et al.) (2023 study)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Government of Kenya — State Department for Gender and Affirmative Action / Ministry of Education
Period
2011–present
Keywords
menstrual health, public education, gender policy, public finance

Context

Kenya's Ministry of Education began distributing free sanitary towels to girls in classes 4-8 in the 2011/2012 financial year, with an initial budget of about $3.34 million reaching roughly 444,000 girls.

Objectives

To provide free, sufficient and quality sanitary towels (and safe disposal facilities) to every girl who has reached puberty in public basic education institutions, aiming to reduce menstruation-related school absenteeism.

Activities

In June 2017 the Basic Education (Amendment) Act inserted Section 39(k), making provision a legal obligation; the programme is now named as a component of Kenya's Vision 2030 School Health and Nutrition flagship project.

Results

By 2022, an Auditor-General performance audit found the government had spent roughly KSh 3.1 billion and reached about 8.86 million girls in classes 6-8 since inception, though actual annual distribution has often been 7 packets per girl rather than the legally required 9. A cluster-randomised trial by the Population Council (3,489 girls, 140 schools, Kilifi County, Reproductive Health, 2021) found 'no evidence of an effect on primary school attendance'. A cluster-RCT (Phillips-Howard et al., BMJ Open, 2016) and a larger trial (Zulaika et al., eClinicalMedicine, 2023, 4,137 girls) likewise found no significant reduction in school dropout; the 2023 trial found pregnancy and marriage, not menstruation, drove most dropout.

Conclusions

The programme is a well-intentioned, legally entrenched and still-operating policy with strong institutional and gender-mainstreaming embedding, but weak evidence from multiple independent randomised trials that it achieves its stated goal of reducing absenteeism, compounded by persistent budgeting and procurement problems including documented tender irregularities.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M) — Initial budget ~$3.34 million (2011/12); cumulative spend reached roughly KSh 3.1 billion by 2022 per Auditor-General audit; a doubled Sh940 million budget in 2023 still had not reached schools four months into the financial year.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Distribution began in 2011/2012; became a legal obligation in 2017; remains funded and operating as of the most recent reporting (2025).
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Education, State Department for Gender and Affirmative Action

Conditions for success

  • Legal entitlement (Basic Education (Amendment) Act 2017, Section 39(k)) making provision a statutory obligation rather than discretionary
  • Stable administrative ownership and predictable, timely budget disbursement

Common failure modes

  • Administrative responsibility shifted between five different government departments in seven years, linked by auditors and MPs to recurring distribution delays
  • Auditor-General and parliamentary findings documented tender irregularities, including a Sh25 million loss from tenders not awarded to the lowest bidder
  • Actual distribution has often been 7 packets per girl versus the legally required 9, with some constituencies reporting as few as 6 packets over three years by 2025
  • Three independent randomised/quasi-experimental trials (2016, 2021, 2023) found no significant effect on school attendance or dropout from pad distribution alone

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Similar practices you may find useful