About 200 participants will be invited with significant numbers from Africa and Asia. A rough breakdown of the invited participants is as follows: Sponsored participants: 80 (from South Africa, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Swaziland and India). Within this group there will be around 30 presenters. An additional 100 or so self-paying participants will be drawn from the countries (approx 20), the CGIAR (10), the UN (15), research organizations and foundations (10), donors (20), independents (10), other networks and regional bodies (15). The main criterion for participation is direct involvement in research, policymaking or programming in this broad area. Participants thus will not be invited only to listen and learn – they also need to be able to contribute directly. A wider network of individual and organizations – who are interested but will not be able to participate in Durban -- is being developed to receive the inputs and outputs of the conference.

Participants will contribute to the conference by sharing research, programming and policy experience, and sharing tools, guidelines and processes they have developed or used to address the food and nutrition security concerns of those affected by HIV/AIDS. They will gain an opportunity to interact with researchers and professionals involved in programming and policy -- not only from their own countries, but also from others in Asia and Africa. It is envisioned that the interactions will continue after the conference through the process of strengthened national and regional networks such as the Regional Network on HIV/AIDS, Rural Livelihoods and Food Security (RENEWAL) www.ifpri.org/renewal. They will also gain a concrete understanding of the state of art evidence on the interactions between HIV/AIDS and food and nutrition security and what works to address these interactions, under what circumstances. And finally, they will gain an opportunity to strengthen their capacity in developing and implementing research, tools, guidelines and processes for addressing these interactions.