Liyema Somnono

Updated January 2024

Liyema is a gender and human rights activist. She is currently employed as a paralegal at SWEAT (Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task Force) and is a member of the drafting team for the national legislation to decriminalize sex work. Liyema is a member of the Eastern Cape AIDS Council Women’s Sector and serves on the Young Women’s HIV Prevention Council.

Impact

Liyema was a national leader in mobilizing testimonials for public comment in favor of South Africa’s sex worker decriminalization bill (which has been put on hold for now). She also initiated community-led monitoring, highlighting the struggles of young women in rural Eastern Cape to access HIV prevention and family planning services.

Media

Outreach

Natasha Mwila

Updated January 2024

Natasha is the Advocacy, Information and Research Officer at The Network of Zambian People Living with HIV/AIDS. She is actively involved in advocacy and preparedness for the injectable PrEP and the PrEP vaginal ring.

Impact

Natasha successfully pressured Zambia to approve the dapivirine vaginal ring and CAB for PrEP, using both traditional and social media. She helped shape her country’s HIV Prevention Roadmap and guidelines for injectable PrEP. She also led Zambia’s PEPFAR COP process and was on the Global Fund writing team, ensuring allocations for HIV prevention.

Read about some of Natasha’s latest work in our CASPR Results Bulletin (October 2023).

Media

Advocacy

John Mutsambi

John is the technical lead on HIV and specifically PrEP, at TBHIV Care. He’s involved in preparing new sites for the introduction of PrEP among adolescent girls and young women and preparing advocacy training for PrEP champions at PrEP implementation sites. He is a community engagement specialist whose experience spans 25 years. He has worked cross-culturally, advocating for the active engagement of communities in HIV prevention research and implementation and has developed and managed community engagement programs at clinical trial sites in six countries in eastern and southern Africa.

Fellowship Focus
John pushed for extended PrEP guidelines that include all people at substantial risk of HIV infection in South Africa and for increased access to PrEP. He also worked with PrEP advocates, civil society and clinical trialists to prepare for the results of the microbicide vaginal ring trials, ASPIRE and the Ring Study. His advocacy influenced the Medicines Control Council’s approval of the use of Truvada for PrEP in November 2015. In addition, he was directly involved in the development of the national oral PrEP and test and treat guidelines and accompanying policy. He also did extensive preparatory work in anticipation of the possible rollout of the dapivirine vaginal ring.

In Their Own Words
There’s a need in South Africa for PrEP awareness among individuals and institutions with decision-making authority, and particularly for key populations.

My Work as a Fellow

  • Petition for approval of PrEP: This petition, calling the South African Medicines Control Council to approve PrEP for all individuals at substantial risk of HIV in South Africa, was developed and led by John Mutsambi and other civil society advocates in South Africa.
  • Blog post: John published the blog “In Their Own Voices: South Africans at high risk of HIV Infection demand access to PrEP” on AVAC’s P-Values Blog, in which he amplified the increasing voices demanding for PrEP in South Africa. He also mapped steps to get there.
  • Give us ARVs so we don’t get HIV: This is an op-ed authored by John Mutsambi together with South African advocates in the Mail & Guardian in November 2015 calling on the South Africa government to make the bold step of rolling out PrEP among specific population groups that are substantial risk of HIV acquisition—such as young women and girls, sex workers, gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM), discordant couples, truckers and people who inject drugs.
  • PrEP FAQ: John developed this PrEP frequently asked questions document to be a living tool to document and help answer questions about PrEP that he heard throughout his engagements with communities.
  • Project poster: This poster is a single-page summary of John’s project that he presented at the end of his Fellowship.
  • Advocates statement on dapivirine ring results: This is a response by South African civil society, including John, to the microbicides dapivirine ring results that were released at CROI 2016.
  • Fellowship summary report: “An enriching immersion into HIV prevention advocacy” is a summary of John’s experience and activities during the Fellowship.

Kingsley Seth Chasanga

Kingsley is a social development specialist with 12 years of work experience in HIV and AIDS planning, management, monitoring and evaluation, and advocacy. At MANASO he was responsible for advocacy to improve access to quality HIV and AIDS services at the national and community levels. He is also a member of the Community Advisory Board of the University of North Carolina project, which leads AIDS vaccine research in Malawi. He has just completed his Master of Public Administration: International Development with University of York (UK) and holds a bachelor’s degree in Education Humanities, specialising in planning, rural development and teaching from the University of Malawi-Chancellor College.

Why I want to advocate for HIV prevention in 2016?
Malawi needs a well-informed civil society, both organisations and individuals including discordant couples and young people, to lobby for and demand the availability of PrEP from decision makers and service providers.

Amaka Enemo

Amaka is a sex worker and HIV activist, as Coordinator of the Nigeria Sex Workers Association and co-chair of Key Affected Populations in Nigeria. She is active in her country’s Global Fund process, where she helped to draft its Concept Note. She has a degree in political science from Delta State University, Abraka.

Why I want to advocate for HIV prevention in 2016:
Being a part of the sex worker community, I notice that most of the members are HIV positive. I really want something to reduce the spread of HIV. PrEP and microbicides, as part of the prevention package, could do a whole lot of good for my community considering the risk associated with our work.

Ntombozuko Kraai

Ntombozuko has been a coordinator of Wellness Foundation’s Young Urban Women project in partnership with ActionAid International. She is a human rights activist focusing on young women and sexual and reproductive health with a special interest in gender-based violence. She has mobilized and educated the community around voluntary medical male circumcision, PrEP, microbicides, clinical trial conduct and more. She has also represented community on the protocol development teams for the vaccine study, HVTN 097, and the microbicide ring study, ASPIRE 020. Ntombozuko is raising three children—two boys and a daughter—and her desire is to see them respect women and to see violence of any kind as a crime.

Why I want to advocate for HIV prevention in 2016?
In South Africa, the HIV incidence rate amongst females aged 15-24 is four times higher than males the same age. There has been a lot done on HIV treatment, care and support, despite the current challenges of antiretroviral stock-outs. Activism has been built for many years and many HIV positive heroes have changed the status quo. We can learn as prevention activists from the ARV rollout but research is still a new concept for many communities. There is a need to educate young women on new biomedical prevention methods, the importance of research and how it’s done so that they will become champions of an HIV free generation.

Peter Mogere

Peter currently oversees several HIV self-testing (HIVST) and PrEP delivery studies being implemented in collaboration with government and private facilities. He is a regulatory affairs specialist in the conduct of clinical trials and currently works as the pharmacy lead and project coordinator for several studies as well as the lead of a regulatory docket. Peter is also the Secretary General of the Kenya Pharmaceutical Association (KPA) and a health research advocate.

Fellowship Focus
Peter has championed HIVST as part of the PrEP package and the first 90 (out of the 90-90-90 treatment targets). He helped to successfully draft and shepherd the launch of Kenya’s HIVST guidelines and PrEP Framework inclusive of HIVST. He then led the sensitization of health workers and demand creation for self-testing through the media. Peter also lobbied the government to provide HIV self-testing kits free of charge with support from Global Fund and PEPFAR and in the private sector at cost. With the guidelines in place and government commitment to HIV self-testing scale-up, Peter continues to advocate for the broader rollout of the kits by the government, monitoring the processes of both domestic and external funding for the continuity of the programs. As a result of his work, he’s now coordinating a demonstration project at his host organization in Thika to explore how HIVST impacts PrEP uptake.

In Their Own Words
Advocacy isn’t about just making noise, but helping to find solutions. As a healthcare provider with experience in research and PrEP delivery, I helped translate the scientific jargon to simple, understandable language that could be understood by different groups. By providing the right information on the products and different strategies, I helped advocates to champion for issue-based campaigns.

Materials

Bathabile Nyathi

Bathabile still works with the CeSHARR sex work program in Zimbabwe and is also the vice chairperson and co-founder of a sex worker-led organisation, Women Against All Forms of Discrimination (WAAD). She started sex work at the age of fourteen. After noticing that most sex workers believe that they are already HIV positive or will eventually become so because of the nature of their work, she dedicated her life to empowering her peers. When she tested HIV-negative, she started taking PrEP and has made it her calling to mobilize sex workers to seek and access PrEP and other relevant services to remain healthy.

Fellowship Focus
Sinikwe and Bathabile’s work together focused on sex workers’ acceptance of PrEP ahead of Zimbabwe’s national rollout. They worked with young sex workers, conducting over 50 community dialogues across the country, joined the Ministry of Health’s Technical Working Group on PrEP and engaged health workers, the police, church members and male partners to pave the way for culturally competent PrEP services, free of harassment and/or discrimination. They spoke on radio talk shows and drafted a position paper targeted at the Ministry of Health to emphasize the need for PrEP for young women and adolescent girls as an integral part of Zimbabwe’s comprehensive HIV prevention response.

In Their Own Words
I had feared to be stigmatized or that some would not allow their young women to attend the dialogues I organized, as a sex worker. But I think I managed to keep the demand on PrEP and I ensured that I provided support to everyone who needed information about the pill.

Materials

Sinikwe “Nikki” Mtetwa

Sinikwe is a passionate women’s health and rights advocate who has been involved for more than a decade on issues around HIV and sexual reproductive health and rights. She has done extensive work with female sex workers at CeSHHAR to ensure that they are part of HIV interventions developed for them. She is currently involved in the AMETHIST Study at CeSHHAR Zimbabwe.

Fellowship Focus
Bathabile and Sinikwe worked together and focused on sex workers’ acceptance of PrEP ahead of Zimbabwe’s national rollout. They worked with young sex workers, conducting over 50 community dialogues across the country, joined the Ministry of Health’s Technical Working Group on PrEP and engaged health workers, the police, church members and male partners to pave the way for culturally competent PrEP services, free of harassment and/or discrimination. They spoke on radio talk shows and drafted a position paper targeted at the Ministry of Health to emphasize the need for PrEP for young women and adolescent girls as an integral part of Zimbabwe’s comprehensive HIV prevention response.

In Their Own Words
We also learned that using every available resource tool when advocating is beneficial, e.g., the media, as targeted groups and the communities in which they live are reached with information. Personally, when I am passionate about something or against some injustice, it usually end in doing things in anger or haste. Now, as an advocate, I have the capacity to clearly map the way I want to deliver certain information to exert change. I now recognize the importance of identifying a gap, a challenge, a hindrance etc. to change and deal with it.

Materials

Kennedy Mupeli

Kennedy is currently engaged in science literacy training for civil society organizations for people living with HIV and in national U=U campaigns. He became involved in grassroots AIDS activism after going public about his HIV status in 1998. Although not a scientist, he is passionate about biomedical research. He has been involved in efforts for greater involvement of people living with HIV and more recently on issues of access to treatment and biomedical prevention interventions.

Fellowship Focus
Kennedy formed the first PrEP advocacy coalition in Botswana: PrEP Watch Botswana. He joined the Ministry of Health’s PrEP Technical Working Group, where he catalyzed the drafting of PrEP guidelines and funding for PrEP implementation. He worked closely with communities to introduce PrEP information across the country, generating awareness, demand and advocacy for its implementation. He also identified and supported a PrEP ambassador to champion PrEP and be the public face of PrEP. As a result of his successful PrEP campaigning, Kennedy was invited to write a weekly column on HIV for the Midweek Sun newspaper. His coalition continues to advocate for PrEP rollout as well as the dapivirine ring and other biomedical prevention. He also helped to set up a pioneer health journalists coalition in Botswana to keep HIV/AIDS and other health issues at the forefront of their coverage.

In Their Own Words
During my early years of advocacy, I was exposed to a more radical advocacy approach. I have since learned that sometimes diplomacy is an equally effective approach to influence change. You only need a plan with realistic objectives and evidence. Intensive literature review is also vital for a successful advocacy project. I had all this and it worked for me. I was able to work within the ranks of the Ministry of Health (technical working group) to influence change, and change has happened and is still happening.

Materials