For many Botswana families, the Covid-19 lockdown turned homes into pressure cookers.
Parents lost jobs or saw incomes disappear overnight. Teenagers found themselves cut off from school and friends. Anxiety, uncertainty and isolation crept into households already carrying the weight of financial strain. Around the world, experts warned that violence inside homes could become the pandemic’s hidden crisis.
Yet amid that uncertainty, something unexpected was happening in Botswana.
Thousands of kilometres apart but connected through mobile phones and WhatsApp messages, parents and teenagers were taking part in conversations about listening instead of shouting, understanding instead of punishing, and finding healthier ways to navigate family life. Now, one of Africa’s largest studies on parenting programmes suggests those conversations may have made a remarkable difference.
The findings come from a major BMJ Global Health study that tracked more than 123,000 caregivers and adolescents across eight African countries, making it one of the largest evaluations of parenting interventions conducted on the continent. Botswana was among the participating countries, where the programme was delivered by Stepping Stones International between August 2020 and April 2021 with support from the European Union and Debswana.
The Botswana programme reached 1,051 participants at the outset, including 521 caregivers and 530 adolescents, with 769 participants completing follow-up assessments. Most caregivers were women, while the average caregiver was 40 years old and the average adolescent was 13. Instead of relying solely on social workers or police to respond after violence had already happened, the initiative focused on something often overlooked which is helping families build stronger relationships before problems escalated.
Across the eight countries, researchers found physical abuse declined by 65%, emotional abuse fell 59%, and support for corporal punishment dropped 55% after families completed the programme. Positive parenting improved by 52%, while poor supervision fell by 48%. Caregiver depression declined by 25%, parenting stress by 46%, adolescent depressive symptoms by 22%, and behavioural problems among young people dropped 43%.
For Botswana, however, the programme faced an additional test. As lockdowns restricted movement, face-to-face sessions became impossible. Researchers noted that in Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, programme delivery shifted to phones and WhatsApp, although poor internet access and limited mobile data made remote participation difficult for many families.
Researchers argue the findings are significant because social programmes often lose effectiveness once they move from carefully managed pilot projects to nationwide implementation. Instead, they found evidence that parenting interventions can continue producing meaningful improvements even when delivered by governments and non-governmental organisations operating under financial and logistical constraints.
“This study shows that an evidence-based parenting programme for caregivers and their adolescents can retain effectiveness when delivered at scale within routine NGO and government delivery,” the researchers wrote.
The authors said the results strengthen the case for governments to invest in parenting support as part of wider efforts to prevent violence against children. “This study adds further support to the movement for governments to provide evidence-based parenting programmes as a means to tackle violence against children across contexts, including humanitarian settings,” they said.
The researchers acknowledged that outcomes differed between countries, reflecting variations in economic conditions, conflict, public health crises and social norms. They also cautioned that the study did not include control groups, meaning it cannot definitively prove the programme alone caused the improvements. Even so, they said the consistency of positive results across more than 120,000 participants suggests parenting programmes can remain effective beyond experimental settings.
“Findings show substantial positive changes on violence prevention, parenting and mental health… Findings suggest that evidence-based parenting programmes are able to retain effectiveness from randomised trial conditions across the multiple complex and challenging contexts of real-world implementation,” the researchers wrote.
For Botswana, where gender-based violence, child protection and youth mental health remain pressing national concerns, the study offers a different way of thinking about prevention.
Much public debate focuses on stronger laws, harsher penalties and more responsive institutions. Those remain vital. But this research suggests that some of the most powerful interventions may begin much earlier around the dinner table, during difficult conversations between parents and children, or through a WhatsApp message encouraging patience instead of punishment. It is a reminder that lasting social change does not always begin in courtrooms or Parliament. Sometimes, it starts at home, one conversation at a time.
