Digital CASA Afghanistan Project

Digital CASA Afghanistan Project

 

 

Digital CASA (Central Asia South Asia) is a World Bank funded regional program that includes projects in Afghanistan and some Central Asian countries. The overall aim of the program is to connect Central Asia to South Asia via Afghanistan through OFC (Optical Fibber Cable).

 

Digital CASA Afghanistan Project: Digital CASA Afghanistan is a World Bank funded project, which will be implemented by Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) in Afghanistan. The project will be completed in five years, and it will cost $51 million USD dollars. The PPG (Project Preparation Grant) phase of Digital CASA Afghanistan concluded on December 31, 2018 and the actual Digital CASA project will start on January 1, 2019.

 

The aim of this project is to:

  • Increase access to more affordable internet
  • Crowed-in private investment in the ICT sector
  • Improve government capacity to deliver digital government services in Afghanistan
  • Contributing to the development of a regionally integrated digital infrastructure and a regionally harmonized enabling environment.

         Digital CASA Afghanistan Project comprises of the following 4 components:

  1. Regional and Domestic Connectivity: The objective of this component is to crowed-in private sector investments to improve regional and domestic Fiber-Optic Connectivity (OFC) infrastructure, connect public institution, and priority target groups to the internet at affordable rates, and bring down the overall cost of internet services in Afghanistan.
  2. E-Government :  The objectives of this component are: (a) Establishment of a shared e-government infrastructure and common e-services enablers. (b) Enhancing the national portal and prioritized e-services.
  3. Enabling Environment (Policy and Regulatory Frameworks): This component will finance Technical Assistance (TA) for MCIT and ATRA to address the required policy, legal and regulatory modifications, guidelines and downstream regulations. This component will also support the review and assessment of existing ICT policies, strategies, and standards, legal and regulatory frameworks.
  4. Project Management and Institutional Strengthening: This component will support the project management activities in MCIT and address the capacity development needs of MCIT, ATRA officials. 

 

The following PPG activities have been completed by the project in 2018:

  • OFC (Optical Fibber Cable) survey of Wakhan Corridor.
  • ESMF (Environmental and Social Management Framework) has been developed for Digital CASA Afghanistan.
  • International Consultants have been recruited for ATRA to prepare regulations for Quality of Service (QoS), Interconnection, Tariff, and review of OFC Licenses.
  • Procurement packages have been prepared and announced for conducting Technical Feasibility Studies for the following projects.

             a, Government Network (GovNet) and International Internet Bandwidth

             b, Internet Exchange of Afghanistan

             c, National Portal and selected priority e-services

             d, Government Cloud Computing and Disaster Recovery Data Centre 

  • International Consultancy to provide Regulatory Capacity Building and Advisory Services on Spectrum Management including 4G Spectrum Allocation.
  • International Consultancy to provide Regulatory Capacity Building and Advisory Services to ATRA on issues including Mobile Number Portability (MNP).

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