Promote Breastfeeding: It Is A Driver Of Social And Economic Progress

There’s a hidden fight going on in boardrooms, buses, toilets, and behind closed doors across our towns and cities, a story which all too often is left untold. It’s the story of breastfeeding mothers, balancing babies with working lives, stigma with instinct, rights with reality. And here’s the truth: this isn’t a women’s issue. It’s a human one.

When I initially began engaging with the stories of breastfeeding mothers from across Kenya, I was not prepared for the emotional weight or, frankly, the honesty of their accounts. These were not abstract policy complaints. They were close, intimate stories of women doing their very best for their babies, and systems, cultures, and employers often failing them.

From one mother compelled to pump milk in her vehicle between appointments, to another who was forced to decide between solely breastfeeding and employment, these are stories of everyday injustice experienced by many women for simply deciding to sustain life.

Storytelling can transform culture. It personalizes policy, humanizes statistics, and in this case, stories are what move breastfeeding from the hidden sphere of sacrifice into the public domain of rights, dignity, and prosperity.

If we listen to this plea of breastfeeding mothers, and without overanalyzing, seek to better understand the issues, we would begin to see not women, but citizens, not workers but contributors. We would see people who have real needs, and start to ask the real questions: Why are there so few workplaces that have lactation rooms? Why are there barely any public breastfeeding facilities in our cities? Why are there still so many stigmatized for feeding their children a meal in public?

The Constitution of Kenya protects the right to maternal health, and there are various policies on maternity leave. But these are empty theories unless accompanied by implementation plans that include workplace culture, facility, and empathy.

We have seen companies come out to proactively support lactating mothers, and a more popular one is Safaricom PLC. Through workplace lactation policies, it has provided dignity and respect to lactating mothers. But to many other companies, this is still treated as a favour, rather than a right.

An article by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Why family-friendly policies are critical to increasing breastfeeding rates worldwide highlights that working women do not get enough support to continue breastfeeding, adding that worldwide, only 40 per cent of women with newborns have even the most basic maternity benefits at their workplace.

This disparity widens among countries in Africa, where only 15 per cent of women with newborns have any benefits at all to support the continuation of breastfeeding.

It further states that the investment case for breastfeeding, if optimized, could lead to an estimated reduction in global healthcare costs of USD 300 billion, as well as preventing 823,000 annual deaths in children under five and 20,000 annual deaths from breast cancer.

Breastfeeding is one of the smartest investments that a country, a community, and a family can make. In its publication, ‘Breastfeeding Is Not a One-Woman Job’, the World Health Organization highlights that breastfeeding helps to lower health care costs, increase educational attainment, and, ultimately, boost productivity. Adding that with every USD 1 invested in supporting breastfeeding, generates an estimated USD 35 in economic returns across lower- and middle-income countries. By contrast, low breastfeeding rates translate into billions of dollars’ worth of lost productivity and health care costs to treat preventable illnesses and chronic diseases.

Furthermore, breastfeeding is critical for the achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is an enabler to ending poverty, promoting economic growth, and reducing inequalities.

But even with this, Kenya’s transformative Breastfeeding Mothers Bill 2014, a landmark effort to align the country’s public health and labor frameworks with global standards on maternal and infant wellbeing, is yet to be passed, years later.

The Bill, if passed, offers far-reaching benefits by promoting maternal and child health, supporting working mothers, and advancing gender equality in the workplace. It ensures that breastfeeding women have access to safe, hygienic lactation rooms, paid nursing breaks, and flexible work arrangements, reducing the pressure to choose between career and caregiving. By protecting public breastfeeding and requiring baby-changing facilities in large buildings, the Bill also challenges social stigma and creates more inclusive public spaces. For employers and the wider economy, the Bill promises increased productivity, better employee retention, and reduced healthcare costs through improved early childhood nutrition and wellbeing.

Our policymakers must urgently recognize that breastfeeding support is not a luxury; it is a national imperative. As we strive for global standards in work-life balance and inclusive growth, we cannot afford to sideline the well-being of mothers and children. Socio-economic progress depends on our willingness to invest in the earliest and most vulnerable stage of human development. Motherhood is productive work; it builds families, propels economies, and empowers communities. It is time for government, business, and civil society to move beyond rhetoric and invest in the infrastructure, policies, and workplace cultures that make caregiving and dignity possible.

Breastfeeding is not only a necessity or about nutrition, it is about fairness and equity for better prosperity.

Let’s tell a new story. Together.

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Mungai Kinyanjui is the Founder and CEO of Hadithi Motion Pictures. He can be reached at communications@hadithi.co.ke.