Training Professionals and Eroding Relationships: Donors, Aids Care and Development in Urban Zambia

Driven by the goal of sustaining programmes, donors that seek to combat AIDS have promoted trainings and income‐generating projects for volunteers who care for people living with HIV. This article uses focus group discussions, interviews and participant observation conducted in 2011 among urban Zambian churches to question the effects of these projects for ‘good care’ or relationships rooted in reciprocity, empathy and trust, values that scholars claim foster development capabilities. It compares two church AIDS care programmes with linkages to donors with two without such ties. It finds that all caregivers were motivated by perceived benefits from the ‘AIDS industry’ or the thousands of AIDS projects in Zambia. Groups with donor linkages were more professional, although their caregivers faced more time constraints and patronage expectations, factors that eroded empathy and trust and problematised building development capabilities. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.