Speeches Shim
On a sunny, cloudless day, Mr. Mohammad Naieem reflectively exam-ines a dry plot of agricultural land in Hassanabad village, Jawzjan prov-ince. He reminisces, “The area had enough water. I remember we had three canals full of water flowing throughout our village…”
Imagine being a farmer with limited usable land trying to feed a growing family of 45. That was the daily pressure weighing on Haji Abdul Rahman, an 80-year-old farmer in Jowzjan Province, Afghanistan. He says his problem was not insufficient land, but his inability to level it so that it could be used for planting.
Hamid Mangal is a young poultry farmer from Mango Village in eastern Afghanistan. Right after he graduated from the Tech-nical and Vocational Institute of Laghman in 2014, he set up a chicken farm with a first flock of 2,000 chicks. Things did not go well. Within three days, 300 chicks died. Worse, the surviving chicks got sick, and Hamid spent a significant amount on veter-inary services. In the end, he lost almost $1,300.
The Kabul River Basin flows through eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan and is crucial to the livelihoods of millions of people for domestic water supplies, agriculture, power generation, and industry. The USGS, through support from USAID, is building the capacity of the Ministry of Energy and Water (MEW) to improve management of the Kabul River Basin through increasing water-data availability and analysis.
The Technical Assistance to the Afghan Ministry of Public Works (MPW) project was a component of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Road Sector Sustainability Program, assisting the Afghan government to sustainably manage the country’s road network. This was primarily accomplished through three new institutions – a semi-autonomous Road Authority to manage road maintenance and development, a semi-autonomous Road Fund to provide sustainable financing, and a Transportation Institute to train and build the capacity of Afghan professionals to plan, analyze, and manage the road sector.
Comment
Make a general inquiry or suggest an improvement.