SAHARA plans to hold a 4-day conference on 21 - 24 June 2009 in Gauteng province, South Africa, in collaboration with major partners including the HSRC, UNAIDS, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), SADC, UNESCO, and AU institutions (including NEPAD).

The 2007 SAHARA conference held in Kisumu, Kenya highlighted the fact that there are vastly different opinions on issues such as male circumcision and homosexuality. The 2009 conference will thus have the theme “socio-cultural responses to HIV” in order to explore these controversies. 

Objectives

The overarching objective of the conference is to share information and best practices relating to the social aspects of HIV/AIDS.  Specifically, it seeks to:

• Share the outcomes of social research and the results of interventions implemented in different African countries in order to identify the determinants of HIV/AIDS and the impacts of the epidemic with a wide range of partners, and inform future approaches to HIV/AIDS.
• Create awareness of obstacles to the application of what is known.
• Share approaches to contextualising imported or imposed intervention models.
• Define and identify effective packages and approaches for further action.
• Suggest relevant policies to provide the enabling environment for scaling up effective programs and innovations.
• Reinforce cooperation and coordination within research networks operating in Africa in order to make them efficient tools and alliance platforms of partners involved in producing quality research for the achievement of appropriate policy responses.

Participants

About 500 delegates from around Africa and the world are expected to attend, including: 

• Policy makers
• Programme planners
• Researchers in universities and science councils
• Civil society organisations
• Community groups
• Donors and multilateral agencies
• Students.