UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

KenyaIn response to this challenge, a broad-based group of stakeholders, includinggovernment, donors, the UNAIDS family and civil society, attempted not only torevamp the image of NACC and of the national response, but also to put in placea process of realignment and restructuring. This process took about 18 months and,according to Schoultz, was perhaps the foundation of Kenya’s relative success indonor harmonization. It was decided, with government at the helm, to conduct ajoint institutional review of NACC. Through this critical experience, Kenya startedto understand and appreciate the concept of donor harmonization and support forthe national response, probably even before UNAIDS and the global communitywere starting to focus on it and certainly before the “Three Ones”. The process ofrealignment and restructuring resulted in a streamlined NACC, in the governmenttaking some hard decisions about human resources and staffing patterns and in thebeginnings of a new process for national strategic planning.205Kenya was one of the first countries to initiate the concept of a Joint AIDSProgramme Review (JAPR) – ‘joint’ meaning a review undertaken by allstakeholders. By 2007, Kenya had held four JAPRs and this process, now somewhatinstitutionalized, deserves close attention. It has enabled the Kenyan Government,through NACC, to be in the driving seat of the review process. NACC, as the singlenational coordinating authority, convenes stakeholders to review the single nationalstrategic framework and to use one monitoring and evaluation framework to do so.As Schoultz said, “this has been very exciting for me, personally, and I would say thatthe UN system played a very strategic role in all of that. The UNAIDS Secretariat wasrequested by partners to help conceptualise the strategic planning process, and howto make the JAPR process a useful tool, leading to better programming. And that is,indeed, what it is used for now; and the new National Strategic Plan in Kenya, whichwas developed a couple of years ago, has an annual results framework built into itwhich is reviewed at every annual JAPR process. So, the National Strategic Plan is aresults-based document, it’s used as a monitoring tool, as a management tool for thenational response and, while the process could certainly be more rigorous, I think thatit’s been a good example of broad stakeholder consensus around the direction of thenational response. In addition, and importantly, the JAPR process provides a forumfor discussion of mutual accountabilities. While NACC and other government bodiesuse the forum to report back to the community on achievements and challenges, theforum is also useful for providing feedback to donors and other development partnersregarding how their own contributions might be strengthened”.At the same time, Schoultz does not want to paint too rosy a picture andacknowledges that there still are tremendous challenges in the country. Kenya hasexperienced absorption and capacity issues related to its very large Global Fundgrant, and there have been struggles arising from the broad range of partners in