Africa is too dependent on external resources, especially for the Aids response and this must change, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibé, told the continent's leaders at the AU summit at Addis Ababa.
"This is a source of great risk and potential instability. The status quo cannot be sustained - it is time for a new development paradigm that is developed and owned by the leaders of Africa," he said.
A press release by the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) secretariat in Accra on Sunday says Sidibe asked African governments to take on a greater share of Aids investments in their countries, since financing a sustainable response to the HIV epidemic in Africa requires home-grown and innovative solutions.
This comes after a report in November 2011, by UNAIDS, charged with the international campaign against HIV and Aids, indicated that new infections were declining sharply as a result of a better anti-retroviral therapy coverage with the most dramatic increases in anti-retroviral therapy coverage occurring in sub-Saharan Africa.
The report revealed that the decreasing infection rates were due to changes in sexual behaviour, increased condom use and people waiting longer before becoming sexually active with 47 percent HIV+ people now receiving treatment out of 14.2 million eligible people in low and middle income countries, but Sidibé maintained that it was high time Africa took control of the HIV/Aids situation.
Scaling up
An estimated two-thirds of Aids expenditure in Africa comes from international funding, according to a new UNAIDS study titled "Aids dependency crisis: sourcing African solutions," which reveals that a vast majority of life-saving antiretroviral medicines consumed in Africa were imported from generic manufacturers.
But experts say that whilst the cost of HIV drug regimens have declined significantly in recent years, they remained high and unsustainable, and prices must be further reduced to reach all people eligible for treatment.
Nonetheless, Africa will require between US$11 and US$12 billion for its Aids response by 2015 and US$3 and US$4 billion more than the current expenditure, UNAIDS estimates show.
And to attain its zero infection, zero discrimination and zero Aids-related deaths strategy UNAIDS said in last year's report that it needed "a scaling up of funding to US$22 - 24 billion in 2015". However, only US$15 billion was available for the Aids response in low and middle income countries during the latter half of last year.
Generating revenue
Nepad has suggested that revenue generating sources should include taxing alcohol and tobacco consumption or the use of mobile telephones. African leaders could also explore the wider use of "soft loans" from the African Development Bank.
Having a single African Medicines Regulatory Agency could also expedite the rollout of quality assured HIV drugs, as well as the development of centres of excellence in Africa to catalyse the local production of high-quality HIV medicines and build Africa's knowledge-based economy.
Africa accounted for 70 percent of the world's new infections in 2010 registering about 1.2 million HIV/Aids related deaths despite the sharp decline in HIV infection levels.
