Institute for Democracy in Africa's (Idasa) Governance and AIDS Programme (GAP)

The key areas considered by this programme are captured in five strategic activity areas:

• Research, advocacy, and network building: The programme works towards facilitating evidence-based policy dialogue, and encouraging strong cross-sectoral partnerships to provide new knowledge and strengthen political commitment to fight HIV/AIDS.
• Accountability through AIDS budgeting and expenditure: The AIDS Budget Unit (ABU) collects evidence on budget allocation and expenditure on national and local levels of government. It uses research findings to promote accountable governance through the strengthening of HIV/ AIDS resource tracking and budget analysis skills of national, sub-regional and continental parliamentary groupings, civil society organisations and the media.
• Understanding the relationship between HIV/AIDS, governance and service delivery on local government level: The Local Government Unit collects evidence on the linkage between HIV/AIDS and state fragility, identifies indicators of fragility and develops evidence-based training tools to strengthen capacity for cooperative governance between state and non-state actors.
• Promote participation of people living with HIV and AIDS in democratic process. The Human Rights and Democratisation Unit builds and supports capacity of regional and national human rights institutions to broaden the conceptual thinking around stigma and discrimination of people living with HIV/AIDS, in political, social, and economic life.
• Political communication: The Communication Unit promotes public awareness and policy discussion on governance, HIV/AIDS, human development, and security.

Since its inception the Communication Unit of the Governance and AIDS Programme (GAP) has built its advocacy and capacity support on the broader premise that vibrant discussion between citizens and government enhances healthy democratic practice and that journalists have an important role to catalyse this conversation. It also recognises the role of government and civil society communicators as powerful agenda setters for the particular issues that are part of the HIV and AIDS discussion. In the first and the second phase, the Communication Unit focused on sharing with and often introducing journalists and government and civil society communicators to the linkages between governance and HIV and AIDS. This broadened the communication agenda which was until then limited to a fairly narrow understanding of HIV and AIDS as a health issue with some social implications related to poverty, gender or education. By focusing on the link between governance and HIV and AIDS, journalists and communicators were introduced to principles of good (HIV and AIDS) governance and the implications for using these principles as indicators for analysing political leadership and budget allocation.

In this, the third phase of GAP’s communication programme, the Communication Unit builds on the work accomplished in phase one and two but now also introduces the four principles which guide GAP’s vision of an AIDS-resilient democratic society:

• Citizen agency
• Generating a public culture that inspires hope and confidence in the ability of citizens to act collectively to address problems of common concern
• Acknowledge and galvanize social and cultural assets and capacities of citizens
• Social justice as fair and equal access to democratic processes and key services.

To this end the Communication Unit’s programme for phase three is designed around a group of handpicked journalists and government and civil society communicators who will over the next four years participate in the Idasa-GAP Community of Practice to build citizen action through HIV and AIDS communication. The participants for this programme are being drawn from Cameroon, Ghana and Mali in West Africa, Burundi and Uganda in East Africa and Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe in Southern Africa. Representatives from regional organisations, like Panos Southern Africa and the East African Association of AIDS Service Organisations (EANNASO) also participate in the project.

In addition, as part of the programme, Idasa-GAP together with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has developed criteria for assessing the approach to HIV/AIDS in journalism education and training institutions in South Africa. The assessment tool will be piloted at UNESCO's potential centres of excellence in journalism education. The criteria are based on concepts that emerged from UNESCO's experience in developing assessment tools for journalism education and Idasa's experience in using communication approaches to connect HIV/AIDS and building democratic societies. The assessment tool is designed to start a wider discussion on how to teach journalists to cover HIV/AIDS in a way that focuses on democracy-building. It will also consider the catalytic force of the media in enabling citizens to develop solutions to address HIV/AIDS and other development concerns.

HIV/AIDS and governance

GAP’s work is based on four key principles:

• Citizen agency: the capacity to take ownership and responsibility for defining the problem and proposing solutions to work with government to address HIV and AIDS
• Acknowledge and galvanise social and cultural assets and capacities of all citizens across communities to address HIV and AIDS
• Support and strengthen institutional capacity to develop and sustain good governance practice in the context of HIV and AIDS
• Social justice: fair and equal access to democratic processes and HIV and AIDS services.