AFRICAN LEADERS TO MEET IN UNITED STATES TO FORGE STRONGER AGENDA ON AIDS IN AFRICA

President Mogae of Botswana and Prime Minister Hage Geingob of Namibia to Join More than 125 African and U.S. Leaders in Signing "Principles of Collaboration when Confronting AIDS in Africa"

For immediate release—Cambridge, MA—Key African leaders will meet with U.S. leaders November 12–14 at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for a leadership summit entitled Africa Now! A Leadership Summit to Define African Priorities for AIDS. The Africa Now! summit—the first of its kind on U.S. soil—aims to build an alliance among African and U.S. leaders that will identify existing barriers and create solutions to the growing AIDS epidemic in Africa. Prominent government, community, media, and academic leaders, including President Mogae of Botswana, Prime Minister Hage Geingob of Namibia, and U.S. AIDS Policy Director, Sandy Thurman will participate in the summit. The summit has been organized by HAI with sponsorship from across Harvard University.

Africa Now! will focus on four goals: to compare U.S. efforts for AIDS in Africa with a complete survey of African national AIDS priorities; to further advance the efforts of the United Nations and the U.S. government; to create a framework document complementing the UN’s International Partnership Against AIDS in Africa; and to formalize a post-summit campaign documenting the summit’s findings. The framework document, entitled "Principles of Collaboration when Confronting AIDS in Africa," will be put before the leaders for their support and signatures.

The "Principles of Collaboration" document stresses (1) that African priorities and leadership must be in the forefront during collective African and United States efforts against HIV and AIDS in Africa; (2) that sustainable solutions to combat the epidemic must be derived through the long-term commitment of both African and United States leaders; and (3) that partnerships created to address the epidemic must solidly benefit the public health and well being of individuals within each African nation.

"To be effective and sustainable, US strategies against AIDS in Africa must be based upon close cooperation with African efforts. The ‘Principles of Collaboration’ lay the necessary foundation for meaningful cooperation," says Maurice Tempelsman, chair of the Corporate Council on Africa.

"Nowhere in the world has the impact of AIDS been more devastating than in Africa. Life expectancy rates in the hardest hit countries of sub–Saharan Africa are expected to drop to age thirty-five within the next decade," says Max Essex, chair of HAI. "Africa Now! will afford U.S. and African leaders an opportunity to take stock of the U.S. progress on AIDS in Africa and to forge a stronger level of commitment and action."

Africa Now! will host discussions in which participants can address current HIV prevention and treatment efforts in Africa within the context of the existing U.S. level of involvement and African priorities for AIDS. Sessions will highlight the critical issues related to the epidemic in Africa, such as social and economic recovery, improvements in health care infrastructure, education and outreach, and training and research efforts throughout Africa.


"The key question today that African leaders and the partners of Africa are trying to respond to is, ‘What are the priority areas of intervention that really demonstrate the kind of action needed for this pandemic?’ Some countries in Africa have demonstrated the importance of the political commitment at the highest level to register successes against this pandemic," says Souleymane Mboup, a leading member of the Senegalese delegation to Africa Now! "By bringing influential leaders from the U.S. and African governments as well as leaders from private corporations and philanthropic foundations to the same table, Africa Now! will provide African leaders with an invaluable opportunity to outline the areas that most demand the increased support of the U.S. to confront AIDS."

"Africa Now! is not a typical, awareness-raising campaign," says Richard Marlink, executive director of HAI. "Rather, the summit seeks to bring together existing AIDS leaders from different walks of life, to learn specifics from each other—what can we collectively do now to curb this epidemic in Africa and to care for those affected? Africa Now! is a summit of action and commitment."

HAI is a university-wide organization dedicated to conducting and catalyzing international research to end the worldwide AIDS epidemic. Africa Now! is sponsored by HAI, the Center for International Development at the Kennedy School of Government, the Corporate Council on Africa, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Harvard Committee on African Studies, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard School of Public Health, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University.