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The Impact of HIV/AIDS on the Education Sector

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The Impact of HIV/AIDS on the Education Sector NATION AL ACADEMY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 1100 New York Ave NW, Ste 1090 East TEL (202) 347-3190 FAX (202) 393-0993 Washington, D.C. 20005 INTERNET: www.napawash.org MITIGATING HIV/AIDS’ IMPACTS ON THE CIVIL SERVICE AND TEACHERS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Issue Overview and Strategy Layout Mumukshu Patel Terry F. Buss, PhD Ryan Watson Center for International Programs National Academy of Public Administration 1100 New York Ave, NW, Suite 1090 Washington, DC 20005-3934 202-347-3190 [email protected] This paper was prepared on behalf of the National Academy of Public Administration’s Africa Working Group for the NAPA/USAID Conference on Mitigating HIV/AIDS’ Impacts On The Civil Service and Teachers In Sub-Saharan Africa held in Washington, DC, November 17-18. Views expressed in this document are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Academy of Public Administration, the Africa Working Group or the U.S. Agency for International Development. December 6, 2003 Acknowledgements Preparation of this paper was supported by a grant from the Bureau for Africa, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through its Education for Development and Democracy Initiative (EDDI). We’d Like to thank Constance Newman, Assistant Director, USAID-Africa, Sarah Moten, EDDI Coordinator, and Charlie Feezel, EDDI, for their support, assistance, and encouragement on this project. We’d also like to thank the members of the Africa Working Group – especially Phil Rutledge – of the National Academy of Public Administration for donating countless volunteer hours to this project. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements………………………………………………………. 2 Executive Summary ……………………………………………………… 4-10 Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 11-20 Information/Data Availability ……………………………………………. 21-25 Capacity Building ………………………………………………………… 26-30 Constructive Partnerships ………………………………………………… 31-37 Long-term, Resource Intensive Strategies ……………………………….. 38-40 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………….. 41-43 Endnotes ……….………………………………………………………… 44-51 Appendix 1: Annotated Bibliography…………………………………….. 52-65 Appendix 2: List of reports produced for our conference………………… 66-67 3 MITIGATING HIV/AIDS’ IMPACTS ON THE CIVIL SERVICE AND TEACHERS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: Issue Overview and Strategy Layout EXECUTIVE SUMMARY “The spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has undermined human capacity and weakens a country’s potential for sustained economic growth and poverty reduction. In the most severely affected nations, the disease is reversing the gains of economic development and shortening life expectancy.” USAID Report on Global Workforce in Transition, 20031 “I want to make two quick points [regarding development issues in Africa]…One is the absolute importance of education to economic growth. The second is the imperative of strong leadership.” Andrew Natsios, USAID Administrator 20032 “In combating AIDS, the political leadership must take the lead because AIDS is a behavioral problem, and not entirely a medical one.” Yoweri K Museveni, President of Uganda, 20033 The HIV/AIDS pandemic has crippled many African nations for years – stifling economic development, eroding the ranks of the civil service and limiting the success of educational systems. This strategy paper, arising from the National Academy of Public Administration/USAID conference in Washington DC, on November 17-18, 2003, identifies critical policy gaps in existing studies, and then elaborates on what strategies might be used to formulate an effective plan for dealing with HIV/AIDS impacts on the civil service in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ministries of Education, where teachers have been affected by the pandemic. Mitigating the effects of HIV/AIDS on the education sector is especially important, because this sector trains all public 4 servants, is often the largest employer in government, and the private sector, for that matter, and is crucial to economic development. We provide some background on the problem and how it can be mitigated through policy and program initiatives, before laying out a menu of comprehensive strategies that could mitigate the pandemic’s impacts on the civil service and education workforce. Major strategic approaches include: • information/data availability for essential planning and decision making, • capacity building to ensure effective short-term responses, maintaining the smooth functioning of the system, • constructive partnerships for generating a comprehensive effort to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, and • resource intensive long-term initiatives to stabilize workforce supply and guarantee appropriate prioritization of development issues in Sub-Saharan Africa. Information/Data Availability It seems reasonable to assume that HIV/AIDS impacts the civil service, especially the education sector, in a significant manner. In education, for example, reports of teacher and student absenteeism, and attrition, lend support to this assumption. There is little reliable data on how the pandemic affects the education sector or the public service as a whole. Data extrapolated from aggregate sources – like census information – to analyze HIV/AIDS’ impacts on the civil service overlook several critical issues, including the varying rates of HIV infections across space and working 5 groups. For example, teachers in one district may be infected at different rates than other districts, or primary teachers may be infected at lower rates per student as compared to secondary school teachers. These differences require diverse policy responses, if one wants to successfully combat the pandemic. We highlight these concerns and detail recommendations for creating local data generation capacities modeled after the DEMIS/DEMMIS survey system in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Finally, to obtain accurate data, there must be a friendly workplace environment, free of discrimination against victims of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In the interim, until better data are available, policy makers might create flexible capacity building initiatives to help mitigate HIV/AIDS’ impacts. Capacity Building Initiatives A potentially effective capacity-building initiative involves training civil servants and teachers in focused, demand-driven training workshops. The Mobile Task Team (MTT) approach – funded by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by the Health and Economics Research Division (HEARD) at the University of Natal, South Africa – conforms well to this strategy and might warrant replication. Training workshops for workers in the education sector must be executed in a timely fashion, and tailored to local demand. Otherwise these training workshops will degenerate into drab sessions that induce “workshop fatigue” among participants because of inundation by invitations from legions of vendors will set in, stifling these initiatives. This approach views the increase in diminishing capacity of the public sector in Sub-Saharan Africa as spontaneous and unpredictable gaps in the 6 system that need to be fixed rapidly. Some scholars have termed this phenomenon the “Swiss cheese model.” Another critical capacity-building initiative involves distribution of Anti- retroviral drugs to workers as part of a work incentive package. Mere distribution of ARV drugs to civil servants or educators is not adequate. A strong distribution and monitoring framework must be in place to ensure proper and effective usage of ARV drugs. Toward this end, Sub-Saharan African Ministries of Education and Health might develop a comprehensive and coordinated strategy modeled after programs offered by Medicines Sans Frontiers. Constructive Partnerships Cross-sectoral partnerships among external aid agencies, national and local governments, private sector and public sector enterprises, non-governmental organizations, and civil society groups, are critical in mitigating HIV/AIDS’ impacts on the public sector. Only a sustained, comprehensive partnership approach, can effectively combat HIV/AIDS, because the pandemic is spread across society: to deal with it, all segments of society – businesses, civic groups, religious groups – must embark on a joint crusade. Civil servants and teachers may want to adopt best practices from the private sector’s approach to protecting its workforce from the pandemic. Best practices can be adopted from the models like that of Debswana Diamond Company (Botswana). In 1991, the Company created program coordinators at its mining locations, establishing a comprehensive AIDS management workplace policy in 1996 and distributing ARV drugs to infected employees beginning in 2001. 7 Information Technology (IT) companies and the civil service might collaborate to automate information storage and retrieval. The personnel-based, public information system creates critical barriers to system functioning when key individuals – clerical and administrative – are absent, sick or deceased. Growing awareness created partnerships between donor agencies like USAID and multinational corporations like CISCO, providing training to public sector employees in Uganda. Training provided by IT companies might enhance social capital and skill levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, boosting economic growth and development prospects. Non- governmental organizations (NGOs), like Medicines San Frontiers and International Governmental Organizations (IGOs), like the World Health Organization (WHO), can provide expertise to the Ministries of Education to help with ARV drug distribution and procurement. National governments,
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