ABSTRACT
HIV/AIDS has reached alarming proportions in sub-Saharan Africa and now serves as one of the most important developmental challenges facing the continent. The situation has reached dire levels with observers staking out various doomsday scenarios about the continent’s future. According to UNAIDS, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Indeed, the pandemic is worsening faster to an extent that the ‘home-grown’ program of African renewal and reform, NEPAD, asserts in Paragraph 125 that ‘one of the major impediments facing African development efforts is the widespread incidence of communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Unless these epidemics are brought under control, real gains in human development will remain an impossible task’ (NEPAD, 2001, p. 32). In this respect, the real African tragedy that needs to be confronted is the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its social, economic, political and developmental implications. Various authors have commented and analyzed the dynamics of this pandemic (Akukwe, 2002; Cheru, 2002, Nana Poku, 2000, Nzioka, 1994) among others. What is left largely unanalyzed and uncharted in a systematic way is the pioneering role of African social movements in mobilizing to fight to ensure access to anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs for people living with the disease.
