The future of AIDS in Africa: lessons from two scenario projects.

Scenario planning or futures studies have their origin in military planning, but have also been used with great success in the private sector, most notably in the energy industry. UNAIDS and the South African financial services group Metropolitan each recently published a set of scenarios regarding the future impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa and South Africa, respectively. This article reviews the methodologies and outcomes of those two studies, and highlights the many lessons to be gleaned for HIV-related health planning and policy-making in general. This is the first time that a comparative study has been done on scenario planning that refers to HIV in particular, and the findings may inspire the conceptualisation of futures studies elsewhere.