What does AAI do?

We are an independent research and advocacy think tank holding leaders accountable for the commitments they have made to respond to health needs. AAI uses research to develop various tools for stakeholders for them to use in their campaigns to advocate for better health. AAI focuses on inclusion of the most marginalized in much of our work, with a focus on women, girls and LGBT people. We have a global reach with an African focus.

Where are AAI’s offices?

AAI has an office in Cape Town South Arica, and is hoping to open a new branch in Johannesburg in 2015. We have staff in Stockholm, Sweden, New York, USA and in the South African offices.

Where does AAI work?

AAI’s work is multi-tiered. We work principally at the regional or continental level with organisations that span the African continent such as the African Union Commission. However we feed this work both up to global processes such as the Post 2015 process, and down to national level. We have global reach with a focus on Africa.

Who works at AAI?

AAI has a small, dedicated team of human rights activists working for us. Our staff are all professionally trained, have experience and cover areas such as policy analysis, health services implementation, epidemiology, communications, governance and political theory, research methodology, demographics, human rights law, community consultations, public-private partnerships, and various other areas of work. We also have specific staff for finances and administration.

What spaces does AAI occupy and influence?

AAI is a small and dynamic human rights activist think tank and as such we are very strategic about what spaces we can be most effective in and where we can have the most positive outcomes. Our policy of needs based research and advocacy also sees us working to close gaps very often. AAI works closely with the African Union Commission, various United Nations bodies, and with global, regional and national civil society and governments providing technical and strategic input, always within the framework of accountability and transparency.

Does AAI believe in name and shaming unaccountable leaders?

AAI believes that all too often the reason why leaders are not accountable is a lack of capacity. For this reason we follow our Accountability Framework and work towards Transparency, Dialogue and Action as a means to ensure better capacity. We offer support, both technical and strategic to ensure better performance, but if a leader does not then show political will AAI believes it is perfectly appropriate that accountability mechanisms such as elections, public demonstrations, legal censure and other more forceful measures are necessary to ensure the leader starts to serve the public’s needs better.

What are AAI’s values?

AAI is uncompromising on our progressive agenda, and believes that human rights are universal and inalienable; indivisible; interdependent and interrelated;

AAI is also of the opinion that human rights are universal because everyone is born with and possesses the same rights and dignity regardless of age, birth, class, creed, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, language,  property, race, religion, sexual orientation,  political or other opinion, national, social or geographical origin, cultural or ethnic background or other status;

AAI works for equality and equal access to quality, affordable, accessible and acceptable health for all human beings.

AAI has a non-religious, non-partisan, non-factional approach to our work, but bases our work and opinions on the analysis of accurate qualitative and quantitative facts, evidence and data.

AAI does not accept funds that may create a conflict of interest and where work does arise we accept only programme costs and bear the weight of human and admin costs ourselves. Rare as these occurrences are, we ensure this information is in the project documentation for the sake of transparency.