Central Asia Regional Electricity Market

USAID is providing technical assistance and capacity building to the five Central Asian countries to help them create an economically viable Central Asia Regional Electricity Market (CAREM). Through this work, USAID is working closely with the Central Asian governments, donors, and other key stakeholders to establish the technical regulations and institutions needed to maintain a secure and stable regional electricity market. 

USAID's Power the Future Fact Sheet

USAID’s Power the Future activity is accelerating Central Asia’s transition to cost-effective, low emission, energy-secure, and climate resilient economies through increasing the deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency in all five Central Asian countries. The scaling up of renewable and distributed energy resources requires comprehensive changes to the regional governments’ power infrastructures, local market designs, and business models. The USAID Power the Future activity is working closely with the Governments of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, along with donors and other key stakeholders, to address the policy, technical, and financial barriers to clean energy development and regional electricity trade.

USAID Central Asia Environment and Water Fact Sheet

Water resources management is one of the more complex challenges in the region. The five countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), as well as Afghanistan, struggle to balance their limited water supplies with their growing populations and economies. USAID works to address these challenges by helping cross-border communities to cooperate with their neighbors while helping governments to better manage shared water resources. USAID’s work empowers communities to apply integrated water resources management principles and tools among various water stakeholders. Our regional work on transboundary water resources management has helped promote stability, economic prosperity, and healthy ecosystems in Central Asia and Afghanistan.

USAID's Future Growth Initiative 

USAID/Central Asia’s Future Growth Initiative is designed to spur productive economic activity across Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan by increasing the competitiveness of high-growth industries, and providing jobs and incomes for Central Asia’s growing workforce, propelling the region toward self-reliance.

Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality Fact Sheet

At USAID, gender equality and women’s empowerment are at the core of our development work. We strive to reduce gender disparities, gender-based violence and ensure women’s equal access to decision-making processes in society.

USAID's Competitveness, Trade and Jobs Activity Fact Sheet

USAID’s Competitiveness, Trade and Jobs activity facilitates trade and employment in horticulture, tourism, transport, and logistics across the five Central Asian economies. By incentivizing firms to become more regionally competitive and by addressing cross-border impediments to trade, USAID helps to develop a more diverse and competitive private sector and generate export-driven growth.

Central Asia Energy Fact Sheet

In recent years, people have gained better, more dependable access to electricity, but over a billion people worldwide still lack reliable access to electricity, and many more suffer from poor service quality, including frequent and long power outages. However, innovative and disruptive technologies are now rapidly entering the market, with the prices for low-cost and reliable electricity falling dramatically. USAID is committed to helping the Central Asia region liberalize the power sector to encourage greater private investment, rebuild a regional power market, and generate low-cost energy using the region’s diverse mix of potential energy resources - particularly wind, solar, hydro, and biomass. By partnering with the countries of Central Asia, international donor agencies, and the private sector, USAID helps support a long-term, sustainable vision of the region’s energy sector. As the region pursues improvements to energy infrastructure and institutions, more robust integration of the region’s energy markets, and economic growth based on energy trading, USAID’s assistance is helping to realize this important vision. The U.S. will also bring the power of the American private sector to develop a cost-effective, reliable and least-cost electricity system.

Central Asia Trade and Enterprise Development

The U.S. is the largest single-country provider of trade capacity building assistance in the world. This assistance helps developing countries take advantage of the global trading system and harness trade as an engine of growth and development.

USAID works with other U.S. government partners to provide trade capacity building and enterprise development assistance to build the physical, human and institutional capacity of these countries to participate in and benefit from rules-based trade. 

Central Asia Energy Utility Partnership

Providing secure and reliable access to energy is critical to economic growth, while diversifying energy sources strengthens energy security. In Central Asia, increased deployment of renewable generation and enhanced opportunities for cross-border power trade can help the regional governments solve their most urgent energy security challenges and achieve sustainable development goals. 

Central Asia Energy Regulatory Partnership

This partnership is designed to strengthen the capacity of energy sector regulatory authorities in effectively providing acute oversight of utilities and subsequently attracting investment while protecting consumers’ interests.

Secretariat For Casa-1000 Power Transmission

CASA-1000 will enable seasonal hydro-power surpluses from Central Asia to serve the growing electricity demand in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Smart Waters

The USAID-funded Smart Waters program builds a cadre of professionals in Central Asia and Afghanistan, capable of managing shared water resources to maximize the economic value of water in the face of climate change and other pressures, understand the value of such practices, and trust each other.

C5+1 National and Regional Adaptation Planning

The USAID-funded C5+1 National and Regional Adaptation Planning activity seeks to increase the capacity of Central Asian countries to engage in climate change adaptation planning.

USAID Power Central Asia

Enhancing energy security, regional connectivity, and adoption of clean energy technologies across Central Asia.

Water and Vulnerable Environment

Water cooperation across Central Asia for improved stability, economic prosperity and healthy ecosystems.

Enhanced Enabling Environment Program

The USAID-funded Enhanced Enabling Environment program promotes an enabling legal framework for civil society in Central Asia to support a more vibrant and sustainable democratic culture in the region.

Partnership For Innovation

The USAID-funded Partnership for Innovations program strengthens Central Asian civil society organizations for better engagement with their local and national governments to promote positive policy changes and improve the lives of citizens across the region.

Central Asia Media Program 

The five year, $15 million USAID-funded Central Asia Media Program, implemented by Internews, aims to develop a more balanced information environment in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to increase openness among youth and adults for differing ideas, opinions and perspectives and in turn increase their civic participation.

Central Asia Support For Stable Societies

The USAID Central Asia Support for Stable Societies project is identifying and testing new methods for the prevention of violent extremism (PVE) in Central Asia. The project conducted field and digital research to identify risk and prevention factors for violent extremism. Based on the research results, the project is working closely with civil society organizations (CSOs) in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to design and test violent extremism risk reduction pilot programming. 

Safe Migration in Central Asia

The Safe Migration in Central Asia project uses evidence-based practices and cross-border connections to strengthen the mutual accountability and effectiveness of governments, NGOs, and the private sector to prevent trafficking-in-persons, protect survivors, and promote safe migration, as part of USAID’s Asia-wide suite of counter-trafficking interventions. Safe Migration in Central Asia is a five-year project implemented by Winrock International in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Civil Society Support Program in Central Asia 

The Civil Society Support Program in Central Asia is a five-year, $18 million program implemented by Eurasia Foundation to cultivate a vibrant and responsive civil society throughout the region, including Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and build a new generation of forward-looking civil society leaders (2019-2024).

Promoting the Quality of Medicines Fact Sheet

The USAID-supported Promoting the Quality of Medicines Plus activity, implemented by U.S. Pharmacopeia, provides technical assistance to sustainably strengthen medical product quality assurance systems in low- and middle-income countries through cross-sectoral and systems strengthening approaches. The Government of Kazakhstan considers the development of the domestic pharmaceutical industry a priority, providing safe and affordable medicines and products to the population. Currently, the pharmaceutical industry is undergoing the most ambitious reform in its history.

HIV Central Asia Fact Sheet

Central Asia is one of the few regions in the world where the HIV epidemic continues to grow. Currently, most infections occur within concentrated high risk groups, including people who inject drugs (PWID) and their injecting and sexual partners. Sixty percent of the cumulative HIV cases in the region have been reported among PWID. The epidemiological data show that female sex workers (FSW) and men who have sex with men (MSM) are also disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS relative to the general population. 

Tuberculosis Fact Sheet

Tuberculosis (TB) is the deadliest infectious disease in the world and Central Asia has some of the world’s highest rates of drug-resistant TB. Delayed diagnosis, weak laboratory services and health care, high-risk co-morbidities, and the challenges of drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) cause millions of people across the globe to suffer and die from the disease each year.

USAID Eliminating Tuberculosis in Central Asia

The USAID Eliminating Tuberculosis in Central Asia project reduces the burden of tuberculosis (TB) in Central Asia by building local and regional capacity to improve the detection and treatment of drug-resistant TB (DR-TB). 

USAID Central Asia HIV Flagship Activity

A regional five-year activity works with and through community led non-governmental organizations to contribute to the implementation of countries national HIV programs in Tajikistan, Kyrgyz Republic and Kazakhstan. 

USAID Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control

The USAID Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control project is designed to break through remaining, persistent barriers to reaching HIV prevention and treatment goals and promote self-reliant management of national HIV programs. 

Leader for People Living with HIV

The Leader for People Living with HIV activity works to strengthen the capacity of civil society in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan to more effectively address stigma and discrimination, advocate for equitable access to comprehensive prevention, treatment, and care, and address human rights issues affecting people living with HIV (PLHIV).