Paper Title
African Domestic Violence: Trends, Underpinning Factors and Its Panacea

Abstract
- Domestic violence has gained global attention for the last four decades, but few researches aimed at revealing the situation of African women who struggled in an environment where both gender condoning for patriarchal power is the prevailing ideology. This research seeks to provide maiden attempt to map the ten years of progress on domestic violence in Africa and merits to debunk the underpinning factors behind a recent trend of women emancipation as well as endeavors the panacea of women empowerment which is least known so far. The research selected four countries’ DHS data from the four geo-political regions of the continent. Overall in the last decade, theprevalence steadilyfluctuated in trend. The study analyzed 3,108 women responses which were selected for Domestic violence module and excluded the missing data to critically analyze the underpinning factors associated with the perpetuation of behavior. Methodologically, the research employed binary multivariate logistic regression to analyze fourteen independent variables pertaining domestic violence. Unexpectedly, domestic violence proved no association with empowerment in Rwandan and Malawian women, but in Egypt(OR1.25, pv<0.05). Besides, domestic violence has been associated with partner’s/husband’s educational level, where women of lower educational level husbands survived high likelihood of domestic violence and likewise, non-working females face less odds of domestic violence. In light of these facts, gender empowerment wrestling the conservative traditional patriarchal power deems to elicit more domestic violence. Here it raises the issue of men exclusion from the overall campaign of emancipation. Moreover, polygamy has proved to be associated with domestic violence in Rwanda and Malawi. Muslim Egyptian women suffer more frequent violence compared to their Christian counterpart. Women who belong to the poor wealth index category and/or drunkard husbands face higher frequency of domestic violence in all the countries of study. The research reveals argumentative facts against some universal orthodox assumptions. And that would help to customize African reality towards curbing domestic violence. Indexes: Domesticviolence, Gender-Empowerment, Patriarchy