Stimulating Research on HIV/AIDS, Migration and Urbanisation, and Poverty and Inequality: Experiences from Three Small Grant Programmes in the SADC Region

David G. Ndegwa, University of the Witwatersrand
Stephen Tollman, University of the Witwatersrand
Deborah Posel, Wits Institute For Social and Economic Research (WISER)
Eleanor Preston-Whyte, University of Natal
Dudley Horner, University of Cape Town

Generous grants from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation enabled three 'Nodes' on Migration and Urbanisation, HIV/AIDS, and Poverty and Inequality to invest in capacity building by funding projects with potential for both good quality research and strengthening capacity. This paper argues that in Southern Africa, insufficient research has been conducted on the inter-section between the three research areas in the spread of epidemics such as HIVAIDS. It reflects on the process of establishing the small grant programmes in three areas, and shares some important experiences on challenges to local and regional research capacity building. Poverty, HIV/AIDS, and Migration and Urbanization are intimately related. Indeed poverty provides the context within which both population movements and the continuing spread of the AIDS epidemic in Africa is driven. The paper illustrates this using data from the Kayelitsha/Mitchell's Plain Survey 2000 (KMPS 2000)and HIV/AIDS surveillance data from the City of Cape Town's Health Department.