Paper short abstract:

Fertility and infertility in sub-Saharan Africa receive unequal global attention. The paper explores whether the neglect of infertility in global health programs affects the outcomes of programs for prioritized health conditions and how new forms of biosociality emanated due to the lack of resources.

Paper long abstract:

Infertility in the context of sub-Saharan Africa seems to be a striking paradox. Overpopulation and life-threatening infectious diseases dominate the globally circulating discourses which have an immense effect on the direction of foreign aid and on its justification. The emphasis on the reduction of birth-rates as constituent component of structural adjustment programs and the control and containment of prevalent diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis has led to the fact that the problem of infertility, which entails distinct gender differences, remains largely un-addressed and assisted reproductive technologies [ARTs] are not considered an option in low resource countries.

The paper focuses on the therapeutic itineraries of involuntarily childless women in urban Kenya. The availability of biomedical options to treat infertility, inclusively ARTs, is determined by the convergence of local and global flows of drugs, technologies, and discourses being conceptualized as a global assemblage. The first paragraph highlights how local and global discourses on (in)fertility have continued to influence material and discursive relationships in the global therapeutic economy. The second paragraph focuses on the definition of infertility in global health agendas in an ethnographic comparison with local concepts of the inability to bear children and coping strategies. The third paragraph outlines how ARTs as globally circulating phenomena have been implemented and conceived in urban Kenya and what responses and tactics have been triggered with a particular focus on biosociality as a new sphere and way of creating connectivity and disconnectivity between the "Global North" and the "Global South".