Factors Fueling the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in Africa's Rural
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Volume 11, Number 3 Factors Fueling the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in Africa’s Rural Communities: Implications for Agricultural Extension and Communication1 Robert Agunga, Ph. D, Associate Professor Agricultural Communication Program Department of Human and Community Resource Development The Ohio State University 203 Agricultural Admin. Building, 2120 Fyffe Road Columbus, Ohio 43210 E-mail: [email protected] Rachna Sundararajan, M.S. Environmental Communications Specialist Innovative Resources Management 2421 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington D.C. 20037 E-mail: [email protected] Abstract The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causing the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is invading rural farming communities in Africa and posing a great threat to agricultural production and food security in a continent already ravaged by war and famine. AIDS is no longer just a health problem but a concern for agricultural extension workers as well. Therefore, understanding potential factors that may be fueling the spread of the disease, such as, polygamy, illiteracy, and circumcision could help in the development of an extension education curriculum on HIV/AIDS. This article calls on agricultural extension workers, particularly in Africa, to get involved in HIV/AIDS education because the future of agriculture and food security depends heavily on eradicating the pandemic. Keywords: HIV/AIDS, Extension Education, Food Security, Small Farmers, Women in Development, Agricultural and Rural Development, and Health Communication 1 Acknowledgments: This study was supported by a grant from the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC), College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, The Ohio State University, USA. Fall 2004 79 Volume 11, Number 3 Introduction Women and children are most affected, HIV/AIDS is something not many accounting for almost 8 million of the 14 people talk about but agricultural extension million AIDS deaths (or roughly 60%). workers must because the disease is About 80% of the dying is between the ages affecting the farming population. HIV/AIDS of 20 and 50, that is, people in their prime is ravaging African rural communities like and constituting the main agricultural labor wild fire and affecting food production and force (Piot, 2003). At the 15th International security (World Food Summit Report, AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand this 2003). Agricultural extension workers in year, participants observed the global Africa can no longer ignore the HIV/AIDS implications of this disease, which has no pandemic. The authors argue that cure, to be overwhelming. The World Health understanding factors that may be fueling Organization reported that the world has the disease offers fodder for an extension failed miserably in getting lifesaving drugs curriculum on HIV/AIDS. The study is to millions afflicted with HIV, estimated at based on a survey of male and female 38 million. Of this total, 28 million are in farmers in the Upper East Region of Ghana. sub-Saharan Africa and 7.2 million in Asia (Mader, 2004). Theoretical Framework Haslwimmer (1996) discussed the Africa is a continent in perpetual impact of HIV/AIDS on small-scale crisis. It started with colonial rule in the agricultural productivity. She noted that crop 1800s, which gave way to short-lived production seriously declined in many areas democracies in the late 1960s. Many African due to reduction in land use and/or poor crop leaders who were democratically elected at yields because money saved for farm inputs independence quickly turned their was diverted to medications or funerals. She governments into single-party dictatorships, added that sickness and death in households characterized by mismanagement of national meant not many family members remained resources, civil unrest, and nepotism. Harsh to work in the fields. Piot (2003) traces the climatic conditions, such as drought and link between agriculture and HIV/AIDS in flood, have also taken a heavy toll on the southern Africa: continent’s agricultural productivity. Now, It’s no coincidence that the six southern the HIV/AIDS epidemic seems poised to African nations that now face the sweep the continent clean of any healthy prospect of mass famine—Lesotho, human population. AIDS is perhaps Africa’s Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, major nightmare (Agunga, 1997). Zambia, and Zimbabwe—also have Nurtured by misconceptions that substantial and still-growing HIV HIV/AIDS was a western problem or a epidemics, with between one-sixth and disease common to promiscuous city one-third of their populations infected. dwellers, African leaders failed to take In southern Africa, famine and AIDS are proactive measures to curb it. Numbers of directly related. the dead and dying in Africa are staggering. A 1998 Joint United Nations Program on The magnitude of the catastrophe in AIDS (UNAIDS) noted that more than 30 agricultural communities in southern Africa million people were infected in the world is also captured by Olivea Muchena, Deputy and nearly 70% of them are in Sub- Saharan Minister of Lands and Agriculture for Africa. In southern and eastern Africa, the Zimbabwe, reported by Mutangadura et al. number of people infected is nearing an (1999): epidemic—about 25% of Kenyans, and over The major impact of HIV/AIDS on 30% in Swaziland, Botswana, South Africa, smallholder agriculture includes serious and Malawi (Mutangadura et al., 1999). depletion of human resources, diversion 80 Journal of International Agricultural and Extension Education Volume 11, Number 3 of capital from agriculture, loss of farm Purpose and Objectives and non-farm income and other The primary purpose of this study psychosocial impacts that affect was to identify factors in the rural agricultural productivity. Women and environment that may be causing the spread men, young and old, people expected to of the HIV/AIDS. The specific objectives of plough the land, tend the crops, harvest the study were to determine: and store the produce, are dying. 1. Demographic characteristics, such as age, family size, and income as these Further justification for treating relate to poverty, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS as an agricultural extension predisposition to diseases, and labor for concern comes from United Nations agriculture. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his 2. Levels of illiteracy as it relates to address to the World Food Summit traditional and mythical beliefs. Delegates in 2002 (see World Food Summit 3. Levels of consumption of bushmeat, as Report, 2003). He noted that 800 million of wildlife may be carriers of the HIV the world’s one billion undernourished are virus. in rural areas and depend on agriculture. He 4. Extent to which polygamy is practiced as warned that agricultural productivity and it implies sexual relationship with standards of living in the countryside cannot multiple partners and hence a potential be improved if problems outside the fueling factor for HIV/AIDS. agricultural sector, such as illiteracy, 5. Seasonal human migration and population growth and ill health, especially prostitution as possible sources of the spread of AIDS, were not addressed. transmission of the disease. Roling & Engel (1991) described 6. If circumcision, particularly female extension as an “Agricultural Information genital mutilation (FGM), is practiced in and Knowledge System” (AKIS), implying the region as studies show that FGM that providing people with information, on enhances the spread of the disease. issues that affect their lives, must be the primacy of extension. The Ghana Ministry Methodology of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) supports This was an exploratory study using this holistic view of agricultural extension, an interview schedule. Although every effort arguing that “emerging issues, such as the was made to obtain a representative sample HIV/AIDS pandemic, empowerment of through stratification, systematic random farmers, environmental degradation, and sampling was not possible because there poverty reduction need to be tackled within were no farmer directories to draw from. the Extension delivery system”(MOFA, Table 1 shows how the sampling was 2003, p. 1). The MOFA further notes that no done. In all, 280 farmers (140 male and 140 “demand-driven” extension system in Africa female) were interviewed. It took 14 can avoid addressing the HIV/AIDS extension workers, including females, using problem. motorcycles, to collect the data. Since data From the foregoing, the authors was collected by direct contact, the threat of contend that HIV/AIDS education must be a non-response was fully controlled, yielding critical component of agricultural extension a response rate of 100%. Interviewers were programming in Africa. This study has briefed on how to administer the identified factors in Africa’s rural areas that questionnaire. The questionnaire was written may be fueling the AIDS pandemic— in English. However, interviewees were information that could serve as the basis for trained to adlib, that is, translate the an HIV/AIDS extension curriculum. questions instantaneously into the local language and then record farmers’ responses Fall 2004 81 Volume 11, Number 3 back in English (O’Barr, et al., 1973). Given statistics were used to summarize the data. that the interviewers were highly competent Cronbach’s alpha was not calculated in both English and the local language, any because no Likert-type questions were used. reliability error introduced was minor. The simple measure of central tendency was Reliability and validity concerns sufficient