AIDS: Africa's greates leadership challenge

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the role of African civil society and its response to the HIV/AIDS crisis. It considers both the constraints under which civil society must operate, and the possible strategies that civil society organizations and leaders may follow. For the purposes of this paper, civil society is taken to include all who seek to mobilize and bring about some form of change through means other than violence and other than using the state machinery. However, civil society does not exclude cooperation with governments. In fact, strong government based on sound institutions and separation of powers is the matrix within which civil society can itself become strong and play its most effective role.