Regional Swedish-Norwegian HIV/AIDS Team for Africa
Established in 2000, the HIV/AIDS Team is a joint program of the governments of Sweden and Norway. Covering Sub-Saharan Africa. Based at the Embassy of Sweden in Lusaka, Zambia. The Team’s main functions are: to provide financial support and dialogue with regional partners for a strengthened regional response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic; and to give technical assistance to the Swedish and Norwegian Embassies in the region.
Vision: An HIV and AIDS-free Africa.
Mission: To support key regional stakeholders in developing a coordinated, multisectoral response to HIV and AIDS, and as well as strengthen national, regional and global synergies to further reduce vulnerabilities to HIV infection, and raise the conditions of life of all affected by the pandemic.
The HIV/AIDS Team’s activities are directed towards three strategic objectives:
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Improved coordination of evidence-based approaches to HIV prevention, integrated with sexual and reproductive health and rights.
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Increased capacity for impact mitigation.
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Strengthened leadership and increased respect for human rights in responses to HIV and AIDS.
The Team brings together Sweden and Norway’s comparative advantage in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), gender, and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people. The team also has a favourable position as accepted dialogue partners in the region and makes its selection of programs, partners and activities on the basis of the value added to national level interventions.
The regional HIV/AIDS team supports a number of partners, processes, and channels in order to achieve its mission, including financial support to regional intergovernmental, multilateral, and non-state organizations and networks for technical assistance, capacity-building, program development and implementation. The support aims at facilitating fulfilment of global and regional commitments on HIV and AIDS, meaningful participation by non-state actors in the development and implementation HIV and AIDS interventions as well as research and multi-country pilot projects, to inform regional and national HIV and AIDS programming and policy efforts.
The regional team gives technical support to Swedish and Norwegian Embassies for HIV and AIDS programming and dialogue and coordinates with other multilateral and bilateral development partners to enhance the effectiveness of aid. The regional team further gorges synergies between global, regional and national partners and processes to increase the effectiveness of national level interventions. Other important objectives are results-based management to increase the effectiveness of HIV and AIDS programming on the global, regional and national levels of decision making.
A Reference Group of internationally renowned African experts on HIV and AIDS advise the team on strategic directions and thematic focus.