Leaders, networks and coalitions in the AIDS response: A comparison of Uganda and South Africa

This paper examines the question of AIDS leadership in Africa by means of a comparative study of two prominent civil society organisations that have been leaders in their respective countries' AIDS responses: The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO) in Uganda and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa. Since an effective AIDS response requires cooperative collective action on the part of a wide range of actors at all levels of society, AIDS leadership can be seen as the ability to mobilise successful AIDS response coalitions to overcome these complex collective action problems. While TASO and the TAC (and the contexts within which they operate) differ in important respects, the comparison can help us come to a number of general conclusions with respect to the conditions under, and process by which, effective AIDS response coalitions come about.