African ag co-ops leading fight against HIV/AIDS

Rural Cooperatives, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Susan G. Schram

Editor's note: See ACDI/VOCA's 2003 "World Report" for more on this and related international aid efforts at www.acdivoca.org.

CDI/VOCA is helping agricultural cooperatives play a critical role in the fight against HIV/AIDS around the world, particularly in Ethiopia and Malawi. Cooperatives are well suited to serving as conduits for delivering information, training and technical assistance to farmers and their families. Co-op members represent a significant proportion of the agricultural labor force in rural communities. As democratically governed, member-based institutions, co-ops help determine their own solutions to problems, use their own resources and can work in partnership with community-based health organizations to bring education and change to hard-to-reach areas.

The productivity of the agricultural labor force is the lifeblood of developing countries, particularly in Africa. Broad-based food security and prospects for economic growth depend largely on the health of the agriculture sector. But in many developing countries, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is devastating smallholder farms, diverting assets from food production and changing conditions from surplus to subsistence, or even shortage.

ACDI/VOCA's Agricultural Cooperatives in Ethiopia (ACE) program has undertaken a three-year awareness and prevention initiative to address the severe human resource and capital impact of HIV/AIDS on cooperatives. In Ethiopia, current infection rates are estimated at 7 percent of the population, but in high-risk groups rates areas high as 50 percent.

Ethiopian farmers interviewed prior to the program reported that, although they had heard of HIV/AIDS on the radio and through the church, they had never received any direct training. Although they knew condoms could prevent HIV, they said, they had never seen one.

The number of infected family members returning home for care and support is increasing, but poor rural families typically lack the assets and the ability to look after the ill. ACDI/VOCA's ACE program will help cooperatives create, implement and monitor sustainable HIV/AIDS mitigation activities prioritized by their members.

To carry out this program, ACDI/VOCA-Ethiopia has teamed with DKT, a social marketing organization with expertise in HIV/MDS. The program will use a "train the trainer" approach, using cooperative bureau promoters and key cooperative union staff. Twenty-five cooperative unions will receive training.

The unions will then implement a comprehensive HIV/MDS awareness and prevention program in their respective 399 primary co-ops, reaching a total family member population of 2.5 million. In addition to development of training materials, condoms will be made available for sale in cooperative shops, and mobile resource centers will host frank discussions with question-and-answer sessions. Music and drama will be used to convey health messages and literature will be made available.

ACDI/VOCA helped establish the National Smallholder Farmers' Association of Malawi (NASFAM), which today has 100,000 members. NASFAM is using its well-honed outreach capacity to spread information regarding HIV/AIDS. Issues related to the disease are discussed at general meetings, and labor-saving farming techniques are promoted to counteract family labor losses.

Each issue of NASFAM's monthly newsletter, "Titukulane," devotes a page to HIV/AIDS, arming local groups with accurate information and encouraging them to abstain from risky sexual behavior and to help infected group members with their farming enterprises. More women are joining NASFAM and they will be able to benefit from this life-saving information.

It has been said that the best existing vaccine for HIV/AIDS may be empowering women. UNAIDS estimates that infection rates among young women in Africa are three to five times higher than among men in the same age group.

Mounting HIV/AIDS programs that effectively reach rural people will require long term, results-based cooperation between the health and agriculture sectors in developing countries, and within and among international development organizations. The rural populations of nations hard-hit by HIV/AIDS are critical to this effort, both because they constitute a vital food production resource and because--if their means of livelihood is undermined--migration to already overstressed cities may result.

Cooperatives represent a readymade, proven conduit to hard-to-reach rural people as well as a means to communicate their needs back to government, civil service agencies, community organizations and others that serve them.

Susan G. Schram,

Vice President

Ag & Co-op Programs, ACDI/VOCA