African Universities Responding to HIV/AIDS |
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Publications |
An HIV/AIDS toolkit for Higher Education Institutions in Africa |
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An HIV/AIDS toolkit for Higher Education Institutions in Africa |
 Institutions of Higher Education (HE) in Africa are increasingly aware that their communities are especially vulnerable to the human immune-deficiency virus (HIV).
The Association of African Universities (AAU) is collaborating with several of its partners to document the role and contribution of its members to the fight against the pandemic.
Recognizing not only their vulnerability, but also the potential of African higher education institutions as a unique social resource for the development and application of country and community-specific knowledge and solutions to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the Association of African Universities (AAU) is collaborating with several of its partners to document the role and contribution of its members to the fight against the pandemic. A major gap revealed by the studies is the virtual absence of institution-specific targeting and action. This emerges from the set of nine case studies of HIV/AIDS and African Universities commissioned by the Working Group on Higher Education (WGHE) of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and disseminated in collaboration with the AAU at the Nairobi meeting of the Working Group in 2001.
In an online discussion on how are the African Universities responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, conducted by the AAU with the support of the African America Institute (AAI) in March 2003, participants highlighted the lack of trained person power as a key factor hindering the ability of universities to respond adequately to the threat posed by HIV/AIDS to their institutions. That is why this toolkit was written.
The objectives of the Toolkit are:
- To support the efforts of African Universities to initiate or improve their institution specific HIV/AIDS prevention programmes.
- To fill the gap in the availability of trained personnel by giving training to academic staff, students and support staff of the institutions to work with their peers to reduce personal risk and to engage with families and communities
This project, which was commissioned with a seed grant from the ADEA/WGHE at a time when there were obvious concerns about the ability of such a kit to recognize and meet the linguistic and cultural diversity of AAU’s membership, is part of a five years core HIV/AIDS program, which includes advocacy for the development of institutional HIV/AIDS policies; HIV/AIDS integration into curricula, research, and information sharing and networking.
The Toolkit, which comprises ten modules, provides practical guide on how to initiate a HIV/AIDS mainstreaming program and establish helpful processes:
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African Universities Responding to HIV/AIDS
