HIV/AIDS is now recognized as the greatest challenge to the development community today, rolling back decades of development progress. It is affecting family welfare, economic growth, and social services. Family incomes have been reduced, as HIV-infected adults are usually too sick to work to provide for themselves and their families. At their death, high burial costs add to the loss of income. The twin enemies of HIV/AIDS and poverty stand to grossly undermine efforts made towards sustainable development in sub-Saharan countries for many years to come.
At the PVO-USAID Steering Committee on Multisectoral Approaches to HIV/AIDS held 16-17 October 2002 in Washington DC, Mr. Stephen Lewis, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General for HIV/AIDS made the following statement: “Currently six countries in southern Africa are facing starvation induced by lack of rainfall and drought. While HIV/AIDS is not causing the famine, it certainly exacerbates it, especially since HIV/AIDS has ravaged the agricultural sector. It is impossible to talk about agriculture without addressing HIV/AIDS.”
Agriculture stands out because it constitutes the backbone of the socio-economic life in rural Africa. But in reality, HIV/AIDS cuts across all sectors of livelihood and requires a multisectoral response. Realizing that the concern of any rural household in sub-Sahara Africa today is food security, the challenge remains, how HIV/AIDS programming can be mainstreamed into the agricultural sector.
Most organizations, on the ground, are very good in implementing HIV/AIDS or Food Security programs, but observations from different fora (Boon September 2001 IFPRI 2020 Vision conference; Rome December 2001 FAO HIV/AIDS & Food Security Conference; Washington DC October 2202 USAID-PVO Conference on Multisectoral Approaches to HIV/AIDS in Africa) indicate that everyone is struggling with what could be done for an integrated HIV/AIDS/Food Security program. One reason for this is that both HIV/AIDS and Food Security cut across all sectors of the socioeconomic life.
In order to systematically analyze the effects of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods and food security, and identify potential areas in which mitigation efforts can be directed, Stokes (2003) proposed the sustainable livelihood framework. This framework focuses on a set of capital assets that rural households use to seek their livelihoods and that are likely to be affected by the pandemic. These assets include human, natural, financial, social, and physical capital. In the HAASI study, focus was on the human and physical capitals and their effects on the natural, social, and financial capitals.
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