Kazakhstan continues providing technical and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan within the framework of bilateral and multilateral agreements, said Mukhtar Tileuberdi, Kazakh Foreign Affairs Minister, at the Roundtable Discussion «Afghanistan and the OSCE: Fostering Opportunities for Partnership and Co-operation». The event was held in the city of Nur-Sultan.

«To date, we have provided more than USD80 million worth of assistance to Afghanistan. In recent years, this figure included 3.5 million US dollars for the construction of medical, education centres, and the reconstruction of roads and bridges in various provinces of Afghanistan. In addition, three years ago Kazakhstan allocated 2 million US dollars to assist Afghan National Security Forces.
We believe Afghanistan cannot build a stable state without an educated generation of young people. As a result, at the initiative of First President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, 50 million US dollars were allocated as part of the government-funded programme to educate 1,000 Afghan students in Kazakhstan’s top universities» said Mr. Tileuberdi. He added that the initiative was appreciated by the international community and to date it continues to develop successfully as part of the multilateral projects, together with the European Union and the UNDP. Mukhtar Tileuberdi informed that this week the first group of Afghan female students has arrive in Almaty to start their studies at the leading universities of Kazakhstan under the Trilateral Cooperation Program between the EU, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan on the economic empowerment of the Afghan women, supported by the UNDP.
In conclusion Tileuberdi emphasized that Kazakhstan welcomes the adoption of a new EU Strategy for Central Asia that gives impetus to further promotion of cooperation between the EU and the Central Asian states, reflects the reality of current relations and charts new directions for our strategic partnership.