By Zakaria Bahtout | ITPC-MENA Programmes Manager

As countries prepare for the Global Fund’s 8th Grant Cycle (GC8), community participation risks being reduced to an administrative formality. Recent experiences led by ITPC-MENA and its partners in Morocco & Tunisia show that another approach is possible: investing in the legitimacy of community priorities by turning lived experience and community-generated data into structured evidence that can inform programme and budget decisions. Here is a closer look at an approach with the potential to become a regional benchmark from Tangier to Tunis, and soon Nouakchott.

Moving Beyond Tokenistic Community Engagement

The architecture of the Global Fund is built on a fundamental principle: country dialogue must meaningfully and demonstrably incorporate the voices of key populations and communities affected by the diseases when defining health priorities.

Yet a paradox remains. Too often, community engagement is treated as an added layer of legitimacy or a political compliance requirement. Communities are consulted because they are expected to be — but their priorities can disappear amid the complexity of budget negotiations and technical decision-making.

It is time to shift the paradigm: community voices are not background input. They are decision-making assets and drivers of programme effectiveness.

This is precisely the gap that structured dialogue exercises in Morocco and Tunisia sought to address as part of preparations for the 8th Grant Cycle (GC8/CS8, 2027–2029).

Two Models, One Standard of Rigor

How can the legitimacy of community priorities be translated into concrete budget and programme priorities? The experiences in Tangier and Tunis offer two practical, evidence-based answers.

1. The Moroccan Model: The Power of Multi-Criteria Scoring

Held on 28–29 April 2026 with around 30 stakeholders, the Tangier exercise focused on building shared ownership of a clear prioritization methodology.

Rather than relying on a fragmented list of demands, participants based their decisions on a weighted scoring matrix built around three criteria, agreed upon by community representatives :

  • 40% epidemiological relevance and alignment with National Strategic Plans;
  • 35% technical feasibility within the Global Fund’s modular framework;
  • 25% strength of the community voice.

The result | a consolidated list of 20 strategic priorities — including supply chain, combination prevention and governance — further refined and validated through a series of post-workshop webinars.

2. The Tunisian Model: Building an Evidence-to-Budget Chain

In Tunis, on 26 June 2026, the innovation focused on the traceability and use of community-generated data.

Each piece of evidence emerging from the FORSS community observatory –including limited awareness of PrEP, discrimination in healthcare settings and gaps along the prevention cascade — was systematically linked to a budget line or technical module within the Funding Request.

The result | a matrix of 10 community priorities, ranked against four strict criteria for inclusion :

  • evidence from the field;
  • alignment with an existing policy or guideline;
  • demonstrated risk;
  • actionable potential.

Three Pillars for Effective Community Dialogue

A comparative analysis of the two approaches highlights three principles that can be adapted to national contexts preparing for a Global Fund application.

1. Institutional Anchoring through the CCM

The exercise must be embedded within the official workplan of the grant preparation process, with the participation of community representatives sitting on the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM).

This is the sine qua non for ensuring that community priorities become part of the decision-making process rather than remaining parallel recommendations.

2. The Evidence-to-Decision Chain

Move beyond isolated testimonies by establishing a systematic link between community-generated evidence, eligibility criteria and budget requests –including, where relevant, the Human Rights and Gender Equality (HRGE) annex.

3. Operational Continuity

Community dialogue should not be designed as a one-off consultation. It should be treated as a continuous process, supported by roadmaps, follow-up webinars and designated community spokespersons throughout the submission windows.

A Tested Regional Methodology Ready for Replication

Led by ITPC-MENA, together with ALCS and CNSC in Morocco, and ATL MST Sida and the FORSS programme in Tunisia, these exercises provide the MENA Regional Learning Hub with a valuable methodological foundation: bilingual Arabic/French toolkits, scoring matrices and facilitation protocols.

The next testing ground: Mauritania.

This third national context will provide an opportunity to test the robustness of the approach and further refine its parameters.

Because the ambition goes beyond replicating a series of workshops. It is about institutionalizing structured community dialogue as a systematic — not discretionary — component of every grant preparation cycle across the MENA region.

Funding legitimacy is not an administrative cost. It is an investment in the strength and resilience of national responses to pandemics.

This article draws on lessons from the National HIV-TB Community Dialogue Workshop (Tangier, 28–29 April 2026) and the GC8 Community Dialogue (Tunis, 26 June 2026), organized with the support of the GC8 Small Grant from ITPC-MENA’s MENA Regional Learning Hub.

Contact | zakaria.bahtout@itpcmena.org