It is very difficult and the main reason is we just don’t have the information. If you haven’t barged in, you’re left outside. We haven’t reached that point in Malawi where we are invited, still not being invited to sit around the table.

Civil Society are not deliberately involved in research studies. CABs are set up, was thought of as community members, rather than advocates. There is a gap in information, no source where you get regular updates from all the research happening nationally.

It’s not that there’s no engagement, most studies do involve community members and they do a lot of awareness raising at that level. These are community representatives not advocates.

It is easy, I participate at the Ministry of Health. I have been doing advocacy for many years, in the early years of development we used to use placards with signs, marching ‘’we want treatment’’ – this has really evolved. The level of engagement has changed now. We need to sit down with these people. Your target is your ally, advocacy has evolved. Things are changing.

As civil society we are catalysing the process of PrEP roll out in Botswana. We are represented at the Ministry of Health PrEP Technical Working Group membership also includes representatives from FHI360 and USAID. There are only about four civil society representatives, but it used to be two and we recommended for two additional.

Doing Advocacy in our context is very easy, our representatives are very reachable. Advocacy around specific prevention tools has been varied engagement with civil society. When there was talks for microbicides Kenya were preparing for roll out; sitting in different policy making platforms in the country. Discussions looked at how to raise community awareness around microbicides, who are the priority populations for roll out and facilitating multi-platform conversations, doing community awareness, access and availability.

Recently there was research literacy for PrEP for communities living around the area where the research is happening, preparing them to be part of research to not only participate as specimens, to influence – share feedback.

Is it doable but I acknowledge that there is a lot of challenges as we do this kind advocacy. We do evidence based advocacy – generate enough evidence so we are able to influence decisions with the specific or respective ministries and sanction change in this area.

There are a number of challenges in this process – advocacy involves partnerships and collaborations and individuals who determine the focal points in the ministry

Tanzania has a new regime since 2015, there has been a lot of ministerial reshuffles, and administration reshuffles. As a result the organisation has lost some of the politicians that were champions.

It is not that easy. If we look specifically at biomedical HIV prevention research advocacy it is something that the country was not ready for, not decision makers, policy implementers – not sure whether it is lack of information. Has been challenging to convince them to take up these new biomedical tools.

I was saying that the advocacy space has been shrinking, and given that some of these tools are for some key populations, the legal environment has been hostile

Frustrating that these trials are happening in the country, but as government they are not getting involved. It is important bridging that gap and having our government taking advantage of these trials happening in our backyard and rapidly scaling these up.

It is not difficult in Zimbabwe, the response is evidence based. The government is operating within the systems with the available knowledge. There are opportunities to engage with government around different aspects of HIV policy. This is managed through the National AIDS Council of Zimbabwe. In my context it is easy in terms of policy, but it is difficult in terms of resources.

There is an acute lack of resources in Zimbabwe as a whole and even in HIV, the country received less funding than others. In this small funding pool, advocacy is last on the list of things that would be funded. Civil society have had to find informal ways of engaging to do the work.