Dear Dr John Purchase

I am writing to invite you to join us as a speaker at the third African Green Revolution Conference, which will take place on August 28-29, 2008 in Oslo, Norway on the topic of Empowering the African entrepreneur. Specifically, I would invite you to share insights on how enable smallholder farmers to evolve from subsistence operations to small business owners.

The conference, which began in 2006, focuses broadly on the key role of public-private partnerships in addressing African agricultural development issues.

Our theme this year is “An Alliance for Action.” Against the backdrop of the current food crisis, we are gathering a select group of key players from the public and private sectors who are committed and empowered to take action.

The conference format will include a mix of plenary panel discussions and smaller individual work groups. The focus will be on developing concrete action plans for new and extended public-private partnerships that can be benchmarked moving forward.

The event will key in on three areas in which public-private partnerships can improve the effectiveness of the agricultural value chain:-

• How can we increase productivity in African agriculture and achieve food security, while at the same time pursuing wider African economic growth priorities?
• How can we ensure that markets work effectively and promote the role of farming as a business, both at the commercial and small holder level?
• How do we remedy the lack of adequate rural agricultural finance and put the broader economic mechanisms in place to facilitate market efficiency?

Each of these issues will be the focus of a panel discussion and will then be developed further in professionally facilitated workgroups. These groups will seek action-oriented strategies against which progress can be measured and reported on at AGRC 2009.

In addition, we will focus in best practice sessions on:

• Innovations in information and telecommunications technologies for market and financial access
• Innovations in agricultural and agro-processing research and development
• Empowering the African small business owner

Confirmed speakers at the conference include:

• Aly Abou Sabaa, Director, Agriculture and Agro-industry Department, African Development Bank Group
• Akin Adesina, Vice President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, The Rockefeller Foundation
• Eleni Gabre-Madhin, Program Leader, Development Strategy and Governance, International Food Policy Research Institute and head of the Ethiopian Commodities Exchange
• Monty Jones, Executive Secretary, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA)
• Raja Najjar, CEO, Modern Aquafarms Ind. Ltd.
• Jeffrey Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute at Columbia University

I hope you will be able to join us and look forward to hearing from you.

Please visit www.africangreenrevolutionconference.com for more information on the conference.