Targets and technologies: Sayana Press and Jadelle in contemporary population policies

In this paper, we argue that target-driven population policy enables the return of technical solutions to reproductive health challenges in the form of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). We examine two Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) commitments related to promotion of the injectable contraceptive Sayana Press and the implant Jadelle. These efforts reintroduce controversial contraceptive methods (Depo-Provera and Norplant); involve public-private partnerships between donors, governments, NGOs and Big Pharma; and facilitate capital accumulation from contraceptive sales in the global South. We employ a demopopulationist lens to highlight the use of neo-Malthusian ideology to justify reducing population growth and engineering population composition. In a geopopulationist frame, Sayana Press and Jadelle reinforce unequal geographies in which the Global North serves as a space of technological innovation and policy-making, and the poorest countries in the Global South, including many in Africa, serve as the laboratory for clinical trials, interventions in fertility, and capital extraction. Finally, the way these contraceptive technologies are promoted harks back to the biopopulationist promise of improving life itself.