Paper Short Abstract:

ARTs have received little scholarly attention in Africa, especially in the Maghreb. Based on our book "Voyager pour procréer au Maghreb. Expériences au sein d’une nouvelle industrie médicale", we present the results of the research program ‘Cross Border Reproductive Care in the Maghreb Region’.

Paper Abstract:

In 2017, the French President Emmanuel Macron used the terms ‘African demographic bomb’ for establishing a direct link between poverty levels and over fertility in Africa. In line with persisting neo-Malthusian logics, his discourse perpetuates erroneous representations of fertility, stigmatizing African women, and ignoring the consequences of slavery, colonialism, and infertility.

Infertility is still invisible in Africa, and ARTs have received little scholarly attention, especially in the Maghreb. Based on our book 'Voyager pour procréer au Maghreb. Expériences au sein d’une nouvelle industrie médicale', we present the results of the research ‘Cross Border Reproductive Care in the Maghreb Region’.

We discuss the ‘cumulative invisibilization’ of infertility in (North) Africa at different scales and the need to decolonize the knowledge produced in the Global North on this topic; the necessity to decentralize the gaze of international academic and health institutions when looking at this region; and the importance of destigmatizing the use of IVF in Africa. Our book shows how reproductive mobilities in the Maghreb, and more largely within francophone Africa, are the result of a complex interplay of relations of domination in which neo-colonial discourses, gendered social norms and socio-economic disparities intertwine. We also examine the emergence of the IVF industry in Tunisia, which has turned the country in a new ‘reprohub’ in francophone Africa. Finally, we analyze African infertile women’s agency and how the quest for a child is intrinsically linked to the quest for respectability. We argue that infertility and cross border reproductive care shall not be depoliticized.