Aids Poverty Reduction And Debt Relief

As HIV/AIDS has become recognized as a threat to development in many developing countries, so have these countries attempted to "mainstream" HIV/AIDS into instruments of development. For poor countries, where PRSPs serve as the country's agenda for poverty reduction, it has become crucial for country-level managers and analysts to make credible proposals for the inclusion of HIV/AIDS in the poverty reduction effort. This Toolkit will enable country officials and their partners to prepare and negotiate effectively the inclusion of scaled-up HIV/AIDS programmes in their PRSPs and instruments of debt relief under the enhanced HIPC initiative.

The potential benefits of giving HIV/AIDS a prominent place in PRSPs and HIPC agreements are substantial. They include greater political attention to and increased domestic funding for the national HIV/AIDS programme, as well as a focus on achieving results in implementing a national HIV/AIDS programme. Crucially, it helps to forge greater consensus among stakeholders on the main strategies and medium-term goals in tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The volume presents a pan-African perspective, giving an overview of the ?African debt dilemma?, causes, effects and policy options. It presents case studies on virtually all the southern, central- southern, and east African countries, and comparative studies on debt and poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa in general, and in the SADC region in particular. An entire section is devoted to theoretical perspectives, covering topics such as debt forgiveness initiatives and poverty alleviation; debt, poverty, compliance and the classics of regression; the urbanisation of poverty, and dichotomous poverty alleviation strategies; and population variables.

The African Development Bank commissioned four case studies on Debt Relief Initiatives, Development Assistance and Service Delivery in Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, and Uganda from the last quarter of 2006 to mid 2007. The objective of the study was to appraise the extent to which debt relief resources are being used to improve social service delivery. There is strong agreement from all four case studies that debt relief created flexibility in governments spending by playing the role of flexible and predictable budget support. In this context, governments acquired more degrees of freedom to allocate debt relief resources in line with their own objectives. In all four countries debt relief resources were more easily transformed into MDG-related spending than tied aid. The case studies had a consensus in identifying the accountability of public institutions to civil society, through community monitoring or execution of expenditures, as the most effective means of enhancing spending effectiveness. This formed the basis for the success observed in program implementation. From the findings of the case studies it is clear that debt relief can lead to enhanced service delivery provided certain conditions prevail. These conditions can be influenced by donors as well as the willingness of beneficiary governments to undertake reforms. The general observation across the case studies is that debt relief has a major positive impact on service delivery, and progress towards the MDGs, when beneficiaries: (i) have high capacity in MDG spending, (ii) are highly accountable, and (iii) receive stable and high-quality aid.