Lusaka — Dr. Kenneth Kaunda is today expected in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at the launch of the Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa (CHGA).

United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) public information assistant Mickie Mumba yesterday said world leaders, including Zambia's first president Dr. Kaunda and Prime Minister Pascoal Mucumbi of Mozambique and two of the patrons of CHGA, would grace the occasion to be launched today.

CHGA is an initiative announced in February by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to study the impact of HIV/AIDS on state structures and Africa's economic development.

Mumba said the core challenge of CHGA research was to capture the complex linkages between human capacity losses at household level, their core indicators of economic growth at the macro level and crucially, their likely implications for inter-generational survival of families.

He said CHGA's work would culminate in a final report in June 2005 which would analyse the governance and development threats posed by the pandemic and contain policy options for mounting an effective response.

"CHGA will also address the implications of scaling up anti-retroviral therapies for health systems capacity and structures in Africa and advise African policy makers on how to address the profound structural impacts that HIV/AIDS is having on their abilities to tackle Africa's development challenges," he said.

Mumba said CHGA would focus on a range of issues including resource mobilisation, economic policy choices and capacity building.