Africa in the Global Institutional Response

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the ways in which SSA has been cast in the global institutional response to the AIDS pandemic, with particular attention to the ideological meanings and policy directions attached to neoliberal restructuring, and the ways in which they have conditioned the response on the ground. In the previous chapter, I argued that a multidimensional understanding of African AIDS has emerged over the past two decades – one that goes beyond a narrow focus on the behavioural and biological, and considers broader structural factors such as poverty, migration, instability, and unequal gender relations in shaping the pattern of HIV spread, and illuminates the broad impacts of AIDS on various sectors beyond health. How has that understanding conditioned the policy response in SSA?