The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide a $55 million loan to the leading mobile phone provider in Afghanistan, so it can extend its coverage to parts of the country that have little or no telecommunications infrastructure in place.

The loan to Telecom Development Company Afghanistan Ltd, which trades under the name Roshan, will also support the rollout of a mobile banking system called M-Paisa. Using M-Paisa, subscribers can transfer money through their mobile phones without having to open bank accounts. This innovative product will especially help the unbanked and will also give the population greater access to microfinance.

“This expansion will introduce mobile phone services to remote and war-torn areas, which lag far behind in the nation’s reconstruction efforts and for which telecom services are vital,” said Mr. Michael Barrow, a Director of ADB’s Private Sector Department.

“It will give people in remote areas better access to markets, access to information and will support families and communities that are often fragmented. It will also be a great boost for the private sector by helping businesses access new parts of the country.”

The Afghanistan telecom market has grown at an unprecedented pace since Roshan began operations in 2003. The company, whose network covers more than half the population, reached the 2 million active subscriber milestone this past June. This new funding will help accelerate expansion of Roshan’s network and services.

The total cost of the expansion will be $175 million, which includes capital expenditure into new districts, upgrading equipment, and transforming sites to use solar power. The balance of the funding will come from other investors.

Roshan, the Government of Afghanistan’s largest taxpayer, intends for the expansion to reach almost all semi-urban and major rural areas – furthering pro-poor and inclusive economic growth.

ADB has supported Roshan since it was established in 2003. After over 20 years of war, in 2003 only 80 thousand people had access to a phone, making Afghanistan one of the markets with the lowest phone penetration in the world.

ADB has approved nearly $1.3 billion in loans, grants and other support for Afghanistan since resuming operations in the country in 2002. The focus has been on rebuilding roads, power infrastructure and irrigation networks. At a donors’ conference in Paris in June, ADB pledged up to $1.3 billion in further assistance for the next five years.

As part of the EU-UNDP-UK €5,011,000, ($7,745,000) BOMBAF Project, Charlotte Adriaen, Chargé d’Affaires to the Delegation of the European Commission to Tajikistan, on 05 June 2008 handed over three new Border Crossing Points on the Tajik-Afghan border to the Afghan Border Police as the culmination of one phase in the UNDP’s Border Management Badakhshan Afghanistan [...]

The Postal Department of MCIT has received a credit from the (UPU) and it intends to apply part of the proceeds of this credit to payments under the contract for Supply of Label Printer & Barcode Scanner to the Postal Department of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) at Kabul, [...]

The Afghanistan seed industry has reached another important milestone in its recent development with the unanimous agreement by stakeholders nationwide to establish the Afghanistan National Seed Association (ANSA) as their umbrella organization for advocacy and representation both nationally and internationally. This decision was an outcome of sub-national consultations in the different regions of the country, [...]

On 6 May 2008 the deputy Minister of Energy and Water, Mr Ziayee, laid down the cornerstone of the new Sub-basin Agency in Baghlan-e-Jadid. The first of a series of constructions that will create the infrastructure for the new Agency responsible for the governance of all water related issues in the vast North-Easter basin of [...]

A delegation of nine Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) led by Mr. Philippe Morillon of France are currently visiting Afghanistan to see first hand the performance of European Union (EU) funded projects especially regarding their transparency and effectiveness in the utilization of allocated funds. One key project that has been selected for examination by [...]

with the construction of 15Km Road in Kabul, Kunduz and Kapisa provinces, the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development provided 10,628 rural families with needed facilities in term of commute to district centers and Cities.
One of these projects is the graveling of 10.5Km road in Kundoz which connects 23 villages to Qalai Zal district that [...]

A total of 24 technicians from agricultural research stations across Afghanistan gathered together at the Dedadi Research Station in Balkh Province with their FAO colleagues for an intensive 2-day practical field workshop from 16 to 17 April on how to collect and analyze data from field experiments designed to assess the Distinctness, Uniformity and Stability [...]

The Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) won the World’s second best investment promotion agency award at the World Investment Conference 2008 in Accra, Ghana on April 18 2008.
The award, jointly given by the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), recognized AISA as an investment [...]

A new Perennial Horticulture Centre in Herat now under construction will collect, classify and preserve the 143 varieties of grapes grown in Afghanistan, as well as other fruit trees, applying advanced research techniques to the improvement of breeding varieties. The table grapes from Afghanistan have spread all around the world, either for use directly, or [...]