Protecting Angola's Youth from HIV/AIDS
The Angolan people and their Government are very quickly recovering from the country's long civil war and working hard to build the national capacity essential to broad-based economic growth and participatory democracy. Recognizing the positive change that is taking place, the United States Agency for International Development has shifted the focus of its programs away from humanitarian assistance and towards a collaborative assistance relationship that seeks to:
- reinforce Angolan efforts to improve people's lives through increased economic opportunity and improved social service delivery
- help Angolans make the systemic reforms that will lock Angola onto a path of stability and wide-spread prosperity
HIV/AIDS is a disease that is sweeping much of Southern Africa. To date, prevalence of the disease in Angola has remained relatively low. In order to help keep the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate low, USAID and its partner, Banco de Fomento Angola, is collaborating with the Ministry of Health's National Institute for the Fight Against AIDS to strengthen social service delivery related to modifying behaviors that put young people at risk for HIV/AIDS.
HIV/AIDS in Angola
The countries of Southern Africa have the highest rates of HIV/AIDS prevalence in the world. Angola is the fortunate regional exception. A sero-prevalence survey, conducted by the Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control in 2004 among women seeking pre-natal care, found an average national prevalence rate of 2.8 percent. The war is thought to have deterred the spread of HIV by making large portions of the country inaccessible.
With the war at an end, and Angola's isolation over, a spike in rates of HIV infections is likely, unless the risk factors that are in place can be effectively deflated. Those factors include:
- a large population of young people, with nearly 70 percent of the population under the age of 24.
- the vulnerability of Angola's young people, many of whom, because of the war, have had little opportunity for education or formal employment.
- an early age of sexual debut, with an estimated 43 percent of young people having had sex by the age of 15.
- a common phenomena of more than one partner.
Youth Centers Curbing the Spread of HIV/AIDS
USAID, and its partner, Banco de Fomento Angola, together with our Government of Angolan counterparts in the Ministry of Youth and Sport and the Ministry of Health (including the National Institute for the Fight Against AIDS), are supporting four Youth Centers, one each in Luanda, Huambo, Huíla, and Cabinda provinces. A fifth Center in Cunene will open soon.
The primary purpose of the Youth Centers, known as Jangos Juvenis, is to promote behavior change among youth that will help them avoid contracting HIV/AIDS. Trained counselors are available to youth to discuss issues around HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and young people are taught the importance of sexual delay, negotiation and refusal skills, and how to set behavior goals. Community outreach activities are also supported from the Centers.
In order to attract youth to the Centers, a number of non-HIV/AIDS activities are also sponsored, including: (i) skills training in areas such as basic literacy, computer literacy, English, carpentry and secretarial skills; (ii) sports; and (iii) cultural activities.
Each youth center is operated in partnership with a local non-governmental organization and contains a general meeting room with audio-visual equipment, classrooms, a library, a counseling room, a computer lab, and a basketball court. The four existing Youth Centers together serve an estimated 35,000 youth per quarterly year.
The Youth Centers are managed by Population Services International in collaboration with local Non-Governmental Organizations. Population Services International first established the Centers with support from UNICEF.
The Future of the Youth Centers
In addition to wanting to open more Youth Centers in other locations in Angola, we would like to add Voluntary Counseling and Testing Clinics to the Youth Centers. Testing for the virus can help to determine those who require care and treatment. Testing also often has an impact on sexual behavior, as those with the virus generally do not want to infect others and those without the virus are motivated to remain so through the counseling that, in standard practice, accompanies the testing.
USAID's Global Development Alliance: A New Way of Doing Business
The Global Development Alliance - USAID's new way of doing business - is based on the recognition that significant changes in the environment of economic development assistance are occurring. No longer are traditional donor governments and multilateral development banks the only providers of assistance. Rather, over the past 20 years, there has been a growing number of new actors on the scene: foundations, corporations, and even individuals.
Under its Global Development Alliance model, USAID seeks to facilitate linkages between its own programs and the programs of these new and, increasingly important, new actors, in order to strengthen the overall effectiveness of development efforts.
Learn more about the Global Development Alliance model. Browse our website. You can find it at www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_partnerships/gda/.
