Peer-reviewed article
Patterns, determinants and associated outcomes with adolescent sleep health in Africa: A scoping review.
Olorunmoteni OE, Popoola BO, Daniel JOI, Dlepu P, Gómez-Olivé FX et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This scoping review mapped 43 published studies on adolescent sleep health across Africa to understand patterns, causes, and outcomes. The review found that adolescents commonly get insufficient sleep on weekdays, with risk factors including screen use before bed, poor sleeping environments, school schedules, and chronic medical conditions. Poor sleep was associated with lower academic performance, depression, anxiety, and metabolic health problems. The review identifies a significant gap in African research on sleep health, with most studies being small cross-sectional surveys lacking objective measurement tools.
Key points
- Inadequate weekday sleep duration was common among African adolescents, often compensated by longer weekend sleep
- Screen use at bedtime, sleeping environment, school schedules, and chronic medical conditions were major risk factors for sleep disturbances
- Poor sleep was associated with poor academic performance, depression, anxiety, and adverse cardiometabolic risk
- Cross-sectional studies dominated the literature (67.4%), with most focusing on sleep quantity and quality rather than multidimensional aspects
- Only 43 articles on adolescent sleep health in Africa were found across all databases, indicating limited research coverage on the continent
Limitations
This is a scoping review that maps existing literature rather than conducting new research or rigorous evidence synthesis. It cannot provide causal evidence about what interventions would improve adolescent sleep health in Africa, as it only describes patterns in existing studies and their limitations.
Abstract
Sleep health in adolescence is a global public health concern. However, limited studies on adolescent sleep health in Africa exist, and the extent of the available literature on the African continent has not been previously mapped. This review aimed to map the studies on adolescent sleep health in Africa with a focus on the geographical distribution, publication trends, pattern of sleep health measures, prevalence of sleep disorders, the barriers and facilitators to good sleep health, rural-urban disparities, as well as the associations of sleep health with mental health, school schedule and cardio-metabolic risk among the adolescents. All published articles on adolescent sleep health in Africa in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian languages were to be included. We conducted a scoping review by searching five databases: MEDLINE (via PubMed), CINAHL (via EBSCOHost), PsycINFO (via EBSCOHost), Scopus, and the African Journal Online (AJOL), from the inception of the databases to January 2025. As previously highlighted in our published protocol, we used the JBI methodology for the scoping review. After screening 921 titles and abstracts and 78 full-text articles, we included 43 articles. There has been an increasing number of studies on adolescent sleep in Africa in the past 25 years. Cross-sectional studies were the most frequent design (67.4%). Most studies focused on sleep quantity and quality, with small sample sizes and scanty evidence on other aspects of sleep health. Inadequate weekday sleep duration was common among adolescents, often compensated by longer weekend sleep durations. Screen use at bedtime, sleeping environment, school schedules, and chronic medical conditions were the major risk factors for sleep disturbances. Poor sleep was associated with poor academic performance, depression, anxiety, and adverse cardiometabolic risk. This review shows a lack of studies on the multidimensional aspects of sleep health and the need for more objective sleep measures to better characterise the sleep health of adolescents in Africa. Larger studies with longitudinal and mixed-method designs are needed to drive the planning and execution of interventions to improve sleep health among African adolescents.