SAHARA holds a regular conference in order to:

• Disseminate research findings.
• Build a network of social aspects of HIV/AIDS researchers in Africa.
• Build research capacity.

An important feature of SAHARA conferences is that they actively seek to involve local communities and people affected by HIV in an effort facilitate dialogue between researchers, implementers and communities.

SAHARA has convened four conferences:

• 2002 in Pretoria, South Africa
• 2004 in Cape Town, South Africa
• 2005 in Dakar, Senegal
• 2007 in Kisumu, Kenya.

The next conference will be in Johannesburg, South Africa in June 2009 with the theme "socio-cultural responses to HIV".