The elderly, HIV/AIDS and sustainable rural development

by Jacques du Guerny

This paper was presented at a seminar on Aging and Rural Development sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)

In high prevalence countries, HIV/AIDS can significantly modify the shape of the population pyramid in ways which developing countries have never experienced. The impacts of this new and brutal aging of populations of developing countries, and especially of their rural populations, raise fundamental questions for food security, rural development and the roles assigned to generations and between men and women.

Through a lack of awareness of the processes at play, the international community is attempting to set up strategies against HIV/AIDS considering the elderly in rural areas as a burden without seeing that the population dynamics will, of necessity, require that they are part of the solution. The population dynamics resulting from the HIV/AIDS epidemic challenge the sustainability of present agriculture policies and require rethinking in a holistic way, the sustainability of rural development as well as the division of labour between generations and men and women.

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