Global funds: lessons from a not-too-distant past?

This paper suggests parallels between earlier attempts to address poverty through integrated rural development and current institutional arrangements for combating HIV/AIDS through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM). The paper suggests that there are a number of lessons that can be learned from the integrated rural development (IRD) debacle if the current initiatives are to avoid some of the problems that plagued the IRD. The errors included top-down management, application of a standardised institutional template in different contexts, overburdened local institutions, internal brain drain and non-sustainability of initiatives.