Harnessing Cultural Resources to Prevent HIV and Pregnancy Among Adolescent Girls : Some Lessons for the Organisation of African First Ladies Against HIV/AIDS

Inspired by the political commitment of African nations to stop new HIV infections among children, adolescents and mothers, the Organisation of African First Ladies Against HIV/AIDS (OAFLA) and the African Union (AU) recently launched the Free to Shine project which seeks to build social capital, mobilise resources and raise awareness around HIV prevention in Africa. This project skirts but cannot escape questions on women's sexual health rights and their intersection with high HIV and pregnancy rates among African adolescent girls, and how these affect women's potential to shine or limit their opportunities to enter into the mainstream economy. For OAFLA to be effective, it must attend to the question on the possibilities for mobilising resources from within local cultures. This article argues that rather than looking to the West for solutions, OAFLA can learn from community initiatives which use cultural resources for HIV prevention. One such bold initiative is virginity testing recently revived in South Africa bu UThukela District Municipality as a strategy to prevent HIV and pregnancies among adolescent girls and enhance their educational opportunities. Drawing on a critical analysis of public perceptions of this iniative, it can be concluded that virginity testing as applied in this community is an instructive case that challenges OAFLA and the world to consider hard but pertinent questions about the role African indigenous knowledge can play in finding solutions to the HIV epidemic in Africa. This, in the context of health and sexual health rights, is the question that OAFLA must address in order to understand and do what it can to prevent HIV and pregnancy among adolescent girls.