‘Being regional’: an analysis of the conceptualisation, operations and embeddedness of regional non-governmental organisations responding to HIV and AIDS in Southern Africa
- Authors: Mushonga, Allan
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: AIDS (Disease) -- South Africa -- Finance , Non-governmental organizations -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/118733 , vital:34663
- Description: This thesis offers an original sociological analysis of regional Non-Governmental Organisations (RNGOs) responding to the HIV epidemic in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in respect of their emergence, constitution, role, function, embeddedness, accountability and practice of being regional in the HIV response. In doing so, it offers propositions on the conceptualisation of RNGOs and the concept being regional in clarifying regional HIV programming in the context of regionalisation. It also highlights the nexus between regional HIV work, and country and global HIV governance and programming as components of the global architecture of development regime under the tutelage of the United Nations as influenced by the dominant powers. The analysis is based on a hybrid of social systems, actor systems dynamics, institutional and network theoretical analytical frameworks. A triangulation of these frameworks provides a comprehensive grounding on which it is possible to identify and analyse RNGOs as social systems, institutions, actors and nodes that constitute part of the global architecture of the HIV response. This also facilitates the conceptualisation of being regional as both a programmatic typology and state of existence of RNGOs, thus locating these regional actors in the framework of the global HIV governance and programming. It locates them in the resultant web of social relations connecting various development agents in hierarchical and institutionalised structures constructed around HIV governance and responses. Social embeddedness and hence accountability of RNGOs is thus presented as determined by this complex context. Based on an extensive use of organisational documents as well as key informant interviews, the thesis reveals the dominance of funding organisations in determining regional and national HIV programme design and content as well as structuring the organisational practices of RNGOs and other development agents in the HIV response. Because of the demands by donors for accountability on the part of RNGOs for funds received, upward accountability becomes a major preoccupation of RNGOs and becomes privileged compared to downward accountability to their programme beneficiaries. However, RNGOs still enact agency in seeking to manoeuvre their way through the worldwide development system in order to advance the HIV response while also ensuring their own organisational sustainability.
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- Date Issued: 2020
A sociological analysis of Southern African AIDS Trust's capacity-development model in responding to HIV and AIDS
- Authors: Mushonga, Allan
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Southern African AIDS Trust , AIDS (Disease) -- Social aspects -- South Africa , HIV (Viruses) -- Social aspects -- South Africa , HIV-positive persons -- South Africa , Community development -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3379 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013261
- Description: The issues of capacity and capacity development in the response to HIV and AIDS is a topic of intense academic interest and is on the agenda of development practitioners, particularly as these issues are linked to community HIV and AIDS competence and sustainability of civil society organisations and community capacity. The capacity development model of the Southern African AIDS Trust is one of the more illuminating examples of capacity development of civil society organisations for the enhancement of community HIV and AIDS competence in southern Africa. The thesis examines the conceptualisation and implementation of the Southern African AIDS Trust's capacity development model in order to identify and understand the multi-dimensional factors that influence the success and sustainability of HIV and AIDS responses. It argues that, even though the conceptualisation, formulation and implementation of the model were appropriate and yielded acceptable benefits to communities in relation to HIV and AIDS, the sustainability of the model depended fundamentally on the availability of requisite resources. The dependence on external resources, the availability of which is in large part beyond the control of the Southern African AIDS Trust and its community-based beneficiaries, undercuts the sustainability of the model and the programmes delivered through it. Community capacities and community-based HIV and AIDS responses are sustainable only to the extent that communities have sufficient resources to build capacities and develop responses, or can leverage and negotiate external inputs. The degeneration of capacity in intermediary organisations (such as Southern African AIDS Trust) that support community competence undermines models that at first sight seem suitable for effective capacity enhancement with regard to HIV and AIDS programmes. In this regard, the thesis also focuses on the organisational crisis within Southern African AIDS Trust and the ramifications this had for community HIV and AIDS competence.
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- Date Issued: 2014