The British Ambassador meets Minister Vahidi at his office
On Wednesday, 12th April, 2016, the UK ambassador, Mr. Dominic Jeremy and his colleagues met H.E Abdur-Razaq Vahidi the Minister of Communication and information technology at his office, and discussed about several areas of cooperation between the UK and Afghanistan.
Opening the discussion, Mr. Vahidi welcomed Mr. Jermey and thanked them for their long term strategic support to Afghanistan; particularly in vital areas such as governance, security and development. He also discussed about the MCIT’s priorities for the coming years, and asked the UK government to support MCIT towards good governance and gender development so as to deliver better services to the citizens.
Mr. Dominic Jermey thanked the Minister and said that he had been assigned by the UK prime minister to focus on three major areas namely supporting the peace and stability process, humanitarian support and development.
Mr. Vahidi provided detailed information about the vision, initiatives and priorities of the Afghan government in Telecom and ICT sector which included Women Empowerment, E-governance, modernization of postal services, National Telecom Development Plan, Afghanistan Portal and technical capacity building for the sector; particularly for the Afghan Women. He explained: “There are two key areas that we would like to work together. Frist, we need more financial supports to implement E-governance which is a very important element of good governance. Second, as per the recent WB report, gender based digital divide is a major issue in developing countries like Afghanistan. We need to design and implement projects that are focused on women empowerment.”
In the end, both the parties agreed to communicate and work through technical teams in order to further identify key areas for cooperation and come up with clear and realistic plans.
