The Pan Afrikanist Watchman

THE Mayor of Gaborone Austin Abraham is this week attending the Mayors conference in Seville, Spain from the 11th to 13th of October 2022.

The conference is held under the theme ‘Leading Together’ and will reflect the intersection of solidarity and leadership in public health as the framework of the Fast-Track Cities movement.

Mayors and other city/municipal officials designate their cities as Fast-Track Cities by signing the Paris Declaration on Fast-Track Cities, which outlines a set of commitments to achieve the initiative’s objectives.

Initially heavily focused on the 90-90-90 targets, the Paris Declaration was recently updated to establish attainment of the three 90 targets as the starting point on a trajectory towards getting to zero new HIV infections and zero AIDS-related deaths

Mayor Abraham was part of High Level Panel on day 1 (yesterday) sharing with Mayors of Bangkok, Seville, Jakarta and with Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS.  The invitation was in recognition of Botswana being a success story for the world in its fight against HIV AIDS.

The Fast-Track Cities initiative is a global partnership between cities and municipalities around the world and four core partners – the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), and the City of Paris.

Mayor Abraham recently agreed with Alankar Malviya, UNAIDS Country Director Botswana to join the initiative and the signing ceremony is planned in coming weeks in Gaborone. In a video clip that he shared with The Pan Afrikanist today (Tuesday 11th October), Abraham extended an invitation to attend the signing ceremony in Gaborone to the Fast-Track Cities team.

(C) The Pan Afrikanist 2022