"Whilst political trends come and go and there are difficult times, the people of Afghanistan are still here. The resilience and strength of Afghan communities gives me hope." - Dr Najmuddin Najm, CEO of AKF Afghanistan June 2022- Despite the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, hope endures through the lives and experiences of the country's communities. At the Aga Khan Foundation ...
Maputo, Mozambique, 18 March 2022 - The Aga Khan Academy Maputo, a new academic centre of excellence situated on a 22-hectare site, will be officially inaugurated tomorrow by the President of the Republic of Mozambique Filipe Nyusi together with the President of the Portuguese Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in the presence of Prince Rahim Aga Khan, representing His Highness the ...
"If every child could grow up with a father and a mother, both of whom love and care for the child, ours would be a much better world." -- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Imagine a world free of bias. Workplaces free of glass ceilings and pay gaps between men and women, with equal parental leave for new moms and dads alike. ...
I have come to the conclusion that there is no greater form of preparation for change than education. I also think that there is no better investment that the individual, parents and the nation can make than an investment in education of the highest possible quality. - His Highness the Aga Khan, Osh, Kyrgyz Republic, October 2002 For over 100 years, ...
As part of a broad initiative to bring Cairo's Islamic heritage to light, the Altinbugha al-Maridani Mosque, located in Cairo's historic Darb al-Ahmar district has been restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) with funding from the European Union. The Mosque restoration project, which began in December 2018, was completed in June 2021. The Mosque was built in 1340 ...
As part of a broad initiative to bring Cairo's Islamic heritage to light, the Altinbugha al-Maridani Mosque, located in Cairo's historic Darb al-Ahmar district has been restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) with funding from the European Union. The Mosque restoration project, which began in December 2018, was completed in June 2021. The Mosque was built in 1340 ...
The Republic of Mozambique celebrates its Independence Day on 25 June. On this day in 1975, the country gained its independence from Portugal. In 1998, the Aga Khan Development Network and the Government of Mozambique signed a diplomatic Agreement of Co-operation for Development. This collection of images focuses on the activities in Cabo Delgado, the country's northernmost and poorest province, where ...
"Sustainable architecture" is now well known, especially as a reaction to the risks inherent in climate change, but the Aga Khan Award for Architecture has been giving out its prize to projects that are good for people and the planet for at least 40 years. Although selection is always based on the principle of excellence, the independent Master Jury has nonetheless ...
"The Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme (AKHCP) was created to test the hypothesis that culture was, and is, an integral component of the development equation," says Shiraz Allibhai, Deputy-Director of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), "and that it can be a powerful tool to improve quality of life." AKHCP devised a unique approach to urban regeneration that involves restoration ...
From 8 April to 16 June, in London's Kings Cross, the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) is presenting a free open-air photography exhibition about the world's oldest trade route. The Silk Road: A Living History, created by travel photographer Christopher Wilton-Steer, is comprised of over 160 photographs that invite the viewer to take a journey from London to Beijing, encountering many of ...
London, 8 April 2021: The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) announces the opening today of The Silk Road: A Living History, an open-air photography exhibition by travel photographer Christopher Wilton-Steer. Comprised of over 160 photographs, the exhibition invites the viewer to take a journey from London to Beijing, encountering many of the people, places and cultures along the ancient trade route. The ...
The healthcare activities of the Aga Khan Development Network began by tracking the pandemic in early 2020. It then engaged with Ministries of Health to develop country- as well as area-specific COVID-19 preparedness plans. The priority was to bolster government and AKDN's diagnostic and care capacities and secure much needed supplies and test kits. By mid-March of 2020, an AKDN COVID-19 ...
In Kabul, Jangalak Vocational Training Centre - part of the Aga Khan Cultural Services in Afghanistan - was established in 2015 to improve people's livelihoods through the provision of vocational training opportunities, especially amongst youth. Training of young men and women between the ages of 15 and 25 has focused on those vocations connected to Afghanistan's rich material and crafts history, ...
Since 2013, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, in partnership with the Department of Heritage Telangana, has been undertaking conservation works on all monuments along with holistic landscape development of the 106-acre Qutb Shahi Heritage Park. In the 16th century, while the Mughals were building grand fortifications, mausoleums and mosques in north India, the Qutb Shahi dynasty also built majestic structures ...
Accelerate Prosperity (AP) is an initiative of the Aga Khan Development Network aimed at supporting start-ups and small and growing businesses. Based in Pakistan, Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic, the initiative builds on years of activities and interventions in entrepreneurship, skills development and business investments undertaken by the Aga Khan Foundation and Industrial Promotion Services in this region. The initiative focuses ...
The Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH) in Pakistan, which pioneered disaster management and response in the region, has trained over 50,000 community volunteers, including women and youth. With AKAH's support, not only are these volunteers equipped with life-saving trainings, but they have access to community stockpiles to provide immediate relief when disasters strike. Volunteers include Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), ...
Ensuring tangible food security, agricultural development and sustainable resource management has been at the centre of the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF)'s activities since it began. Agriculture remains the single largest employer in the world, providing livelihoods for 40 percent of today's global population. The world's 500 million small farms worldwide provide up to 80 percent of the food consumed. However, 800 ...
Environment and climate are core strategic priorities for AKDN, stressing that good environmental stewardship is part of the development agenda and ensuring that the Earth can sustainably support future generations. In line with this goal, AKDN agencies and institutions have worked towards a number of goals, including reforestation. For example the Aga Khan Foundation and the Mountain Societies Development Support Programme ...
Working with local governments and communities, AKAH implements a wide range of disaster risk reduction (DRR) programmes across Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Syria, and Tajikistan. DRR programmes include hazard, risk and vulnerability assessments; disaster preparedness education; emergency response and search and rescue training; and structural mitigation projects for all levels of community and institutional structures, such as building flood retaining walls, riverbank ...
Founded on ethics and values that drive progress and positive change, these civil society institutions - of education, health, science and research, and culture, to name a few - harness the private energies of citizens committed to the public good. The AKDN has been building these institutions for over 100 years - including schools, clinics and hospitals, companies offering essential goods ...
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and a five-year civil war, Tajikistan's electrical infrastructure was in need of significant investment. Among the most affected areas was the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), where economic and human development was stifled during the cold winter months as a result of a lack of electricity for heating and the consequent closure of ...
For over 100 years AKDN has been creating schools, hospitals, newspapers, electricity generation plants, parks and museums, institutions which have helped improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Some of these institutions have been setting or raising standards in their fields for decades. All of them endeavour to bring about a more inclusive society that would ...
The Aga Khan Development Network is largely an implementing partner. It actively seeks to co- operate with like-minded institutions in the design, implementation and funding of innovative development projects. Its agencies need and welcome institutions and individuals throughout the world as partners. AKDN also works closely with local, state and national governments in each country in which it is active. ...
The aim of this UKAID-funded project, implemented by Aga Khan Foundation, is to reduce conflicts related to the use and management of natural resources such as irrigation water and pastures in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as well as in cross-border areas between both countries. ...
In north western Uganda, the AKDN has invested in off-grid energy so that this remote border region can benefit from affordable, reliable and sustainable electricity. Over the last 10 years, the West Nile region in Uganda has been dramatically transformed. There are clear signs of socio-economic change, as well as improvements in security and regional stability. Its largest town, Arua, has ...
In 1860, Florence Nightingale laid the foundation of modern nursing with the establishment of a nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London. Ever since, nurses and midwives have played a vital, central role in providing health services - not least at Aga Khan hospitals in Asia and Africa. From newborns to the elderly, nurses are often the first and only ...
In 2001, upon receiving the prestigious Archon Award from the international nursing honour society, Sigma Theta Tau International, His Highness said in a speech that "I have long felt the enhancement of the nursing profession to be absolutely critical to the improvement of health care in the developing world, and the Islamic world. The way forward was to professionalise, to institutionalise, ...
Zanzibaris are served by more than 200 health facilities providing primary, primary-plus, secondary and tertiary health care. Located in northern Unguja, Mnazi Mmoja Referral Hospital is the only tertiary-level institution that provides full referral facilities and comprehensive surgical care. Nursing resources are governed by the Zanzibar Nurses and Midwives Council, an independent body dedicated to the welfare of the members of ...
Across the AKDN, we provide quality healthcare to over 5m patients a year. This is only possible because of the dedicated, hard working and exceptional healthcare professionals working in our hospitals, health centres and clinics. This World Health Day, we recognise them all and pay tribute to their passion and untiring efforts to keep everyone healthy - particularly in the trying times ...
Over half of the populations of Pakistan lack access to safe and clean water and have no choice but to consume water from whatever source exists in their villages, regardless of quality. The Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH) -- with the help of communities -- identifies water sources in the village, tests the water quality using its technical expertise, develops ...
For many Muslims, gardens reflect the bounty of God and the blessings of life. Through the long history of Islam, there has been an outpouring of poetry and art that engages with spiritual topics, among them gardens as an embodiment of paradise, both earthly and heavenly. So too, extensive poetry, art and literature have been created that presents gardens as secular ...
Architects, art historians, engineers, fine artists, chemists, conservators, and ceramists make up the constellation of skilled young people working for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) on one of the largest restoration projects in Pakistan. The 17th century Mughal-era Picture Wall in Lahore's Walled City has been in a state of decay for over 100 years but thanks to the ...
The AKDN undertakes a broad spectrum of activities to stimulate economic growth and development in the countries where it works. Whether it is supporting community-based savings groups or accelerating the growth of small enterprises, or engaging in small- and large-scale infrastructure projects or promoting tourism and tourism-based employment, or restoring historic world monuments and other cultural assets that spark local economies, ...
Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah, Aga Khan III, famously called for the education of girls and women in the early 1900s. In 1905, he established several schools, which admitted girls. In 1945, he said that "If I had two children, and one was a boy and the other a girl, and if I could afford to educate only one, I would have ...
Ottawa, Canada, 21 November 2019 - The Global Centre for Pluralism, founded by His Highness the Aga Khan and the Government of Canada, recognised the recipients of the 2019 Global Pluralism Award at a ceremony on 20 November 2019 in Ottawa, Canada at the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat with His Highness the Aga Khan and the Centre's Board members including ...
20 November 2019 - From setting up yurt kindergartens in the high mountain pastures of Kyrgyzstan to providing digital literacy apps for young school children in the remote coastal regions of Kenya, to raising the bar on teaching and nursing credentials across almost all of the countries in which it works, in all of its endeavours the AKDN is committed to ...
Paris, France, 12 November 2019 - His Highness the Aga Khan, founder and Chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), today joined over 30 world leaders for the opening session of the second Paris Peace Forum. Initiated by French President Emmanuel Macron, the Forum was founded on the principle that international cooperation is key to tackling global challenges and ensuring ...
15 October 2019 - Investing in agriculture is a way to break the cycle of poverty for some of the world's poorest women, many of whom rely on farming for their livelihoods. The creation of economic opportunities allows women to educate their children, provide their families with nutritious food, save money and transform their lives and the lives of their communities. ...
5 October 2019 - Today is World Teacher's Day. Across the Aga Khan Development Network, thousands of men and women, from a multitude of countries and cultural backgrounds and at all levels of the education spectrum, help improve the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of people by being teachers. To all of them, today, we say thank you for all ...
As a masterpiece from the time of the brilliant Mughal civilisation, which reached its height during the reign of the Emperor Shah Jahan, the Picture Wall is partly responsible for the Lahore Fort's UNESCO World Heritage listing in 1981. However, the Picture Wall has suffered long periods of abandonment, improper use and neglect, and past conservation efforts have left behind a ...
