The Western and Central African HIV+ Youth Network, known as RAJ+AOC, is facing major challenges despite its growing role in youth-led HIV advocacy and community outreach. Co-founded three years ago by Adjovi Husunukpe, the network now has nearly 500 members across 14 countries and works to connect young people living with HIV while strengthening their visibility in national and international health discussions.
The network has built a reputation for strong community outreach and linking young people to care, but its work is increasingly constrained by financial insecurity. According to Husunukpe, RAJ+AOC is run by volunteers and struggles to sustain itself as both a youth-led organisation and a regional advocacy platform. Funding cuts in 2025 have hit community-led organisations especially hard, forcing groups like RAJ+AOC to compete with larger NGOs while still being questioned over their legitimacy because they are led by young people.
The funding crisis has also affected HIV prevention and youth-focused programmes that had taken years to build. UNAIDS has reported that community-led organisations are often the last to receive domestic funding and among the first to suffer when international funding decreases. For youth-led networks in western and central Africa, this creates a direct threat to sustainability, service delivery, advocacy, and community mobilisation.
Husunukpe argues that young people living with HIV should not only be invited to speak at events but should also be included in decision-making, policy drafting, and programme design. Having been born with HIV and having lost her parents at a young age, she believes lived experience should be recognised as expertise. She and other youth leaders are calling for meaningful integration of youth-led organisations into health systems and HIV policy spaces.
UNAIDS Regional HIV and Public Health Adviser Ange-Valérie Meralli-Ballou highlighted the urgency of youth inclusion in the HIV response. In 2025, 160,000 adolescent girls and young women acquired HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, while 35% of all child HIV infections occurred in western and central Africa. These figures point to persistent gaps in access to integrated sexual and reproductive health and rights services for young people and pregnant women.
The article stresses that youth-led organisations are well positioned to strengthen HIV prevention, awareness, and community health systems if they are given adequate funding and decision-making power. The Global AIDS Strategy 2026–2031 calls for stronger community-led health centres and social media-based HIV awareness campaigns, creating an opportunity to place youth organisations at the centre of future HIV responses.
The core message is that youth-led HIV networks in western and central Africa are essential but underfunded actors in the regional HIV response. Their lived experience, community trust, and ability to reach young people make them critical partners in prevention, care, and advocacy. Without sustainable funding, technical support, and real participation in decision-making, the region risks weakening one of its most important community-based responses to HIV.
