The Eastern and Southern Africa, and West and Central Africa constituencies recently completed the first round of learning network meetings for the respective regions in Johannesburg, Kampala, Abidjan, and Dakar between 26th February and 9th March 2018. In these meetings, countries do in-depth analyses on the progress and trends in eliminating the three epidemics, shared success stories and identified barriers and solutions to achieving desired outcomes.
The learning networks provide an opportunity for identifying best practices and learning from each other and developing solutions to: 1) maximize the impact of available resources, 2) bridging the funding gap, 3) strengthen ownership and 4) increased sustainability to end the three epidemics. The meetings were planned to feed into the discussions in the Global Fund Committee meetings (AFC, EGC, SC). The clusters reviewed and discussed some of the critical issues and topics planned for discussion and decision at those meetings and provided input into the African Constituencies’ view at the Committees meetings as follow:
The discussions were very lively, engaging and most of the attendees agreed that CBLNs are a great opportunity to share, learn and deepen discussions within their respective regions. Meeting attendees also shared recommendations on how to improve the organization and coordination of the clusters. To ensure that countries continue to work closely, CBLN Coordinators have been selected as follow: Southern Africa Cluster: Mr. Vulindlela David Msibi, Executive Secretary CCM Swaziland Eastern Africa Cluster: Ms Syson Namaganda Laing, Uganda CCM Coordinator/Executive Secretary Central Africa Cluster: Dr. Benjamin ATIPO, Republic of Congo Western Africa Cluster: CFP (Dr. Abdoulaye Anne will initially coordinate the meetings and pass on to the new CFP)
The full reports for all the cluster meetings are forthcoming and the next round of the meetings will take place in June 2018. Though the meeting took place in Entebbe
