Adolescent Fertility Prediction for Sub-Saharan Africa Using Holt’s Double Exponential Smoothing Technique

Adolescent pregnancy is a worldwide public health problem that requires urgent attention. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest burden of teenage pregnancies in the world followed by South Central Asia then lastly Latin America and the Caribbean. Child marriages, poverty, peer influence, lower educational level, alcohol and substance abuse, parental absence and lack of proper guidance and single parent households have been identified as major drivers of adolescent pregnancy. This study uses annual time series data of adolescent fertility rate for Sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2020 to predict future trends of adolescent fertility rate over the period 2021 to 2030. The study utilizes Holt’s linear exponential smoothing model. The optimal values of smoothing constants α and β are 0.9 and 0.1 respectively based on minimum MSE. The results of the study indicate that annual adolescent fertility will continue to drop but remain high throughout the out of sample period. In order to effectively reduce high adolescent fertility rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, authorities must continuously enforce laws that protect sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls, support girl child education, fund empowerment projects for youths and increase awareness campaigns among communities.