Tajikistan is vulnerable to natural disasters, including mudslides, flooding and avalanches, particularly in mountainous areas such as the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO). In April this year, in collaboration with the GBAO Committee of Emergency Situations and Civil Defence, and the local government including the police division and fire department, the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat took part in a joint emergency management drill and simulation exercise to test preparedness for natural disasters and emergency situations. This image shows a mother and her young child who are being supported by Emergency Management Staff from the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat, as part of the simulation exercise.

AKDN / Ronan Shenhav

The Aga Khan Academy in Maputo is the third in the network of Aga Khan Academies, following on from the highly successful models established by the first two Academies in Mombasa and Hyderabad. The underlying idea of the Aga Khan Academies network is to concentrate substantial resources on those exceptional individuals – students and teachers – who have the potential to transform society. When provided with a world-class education, exceptional students from any background can achieve their significant potential and in so doing improve their lives, the lives of their families, their communities, their country and the world.

AKDN / Lucas Cuervo Moura

Developing self-reliance: Chand Begam used to take on small sewing jobs from home. She attended an AKDN organised training on enterprise development and as a result she has opened a vocational and dress making shop on main road in Gitch town, Gilgit-Baltistan in Northern Pakistan, and has increased her business’ productivity significantly.

AKDN / Danial Shah

The Garden of Tranquility at the Aga Khan Centre. Opened in the summer of 2018 in the heart of London’s Knowledge Quarter, the Aga Khan Centre is a place for education, cultural exchange and insight into Muslim civilisations. Designed by Fumihiko Maki, one of Japan’s most distinguished contemporary architects, the Centre provides a new home for a number of UK based organisations founded by His Highness the Aga Khan: The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC) and the Aga Khan Foundation UK (AKF UK).

Hufton Crow

Ouandja Kone is the president of a women’s water users group in northern Côte d’Ivoire. Her community of Ouazomon has almost 5,000 residents and is one of the largest communities involved in the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF)’s project to improve access to safe water in this dry and vulnerable region of the country. In one year, AKF has improved access to safe water supply for 14,976 people in 13 villages.

AKDN / Christopher Wilton-Steer

Rural development - In April 2015, the Aga Khan Foundation started an organic cotton project in the Nimar region of Madhya Pradesh with the support of the C&A Foundation. The project aims to improve the livelihoods and incomes of 7,000 tribal farmers living there through the promotion of organic cotton cultivation.

AKDN / Christopher Wilton-Steer

In Kwale, Kenya, a caregiver reads from a storybook borrowed from a mini-library that was established by the Aga Khan Foundation's Reading for Children programme. Being read to as a child is one of the strongest predictors of later academic success. Children who have been read to before they go to school, and whose family members continue to read to them, are shown to outperform those who have not. Reading for pleasure helps to develop children’s language, literacy, critical thinking, communication, social and emotional skills. Reading at home also reinforces positive relationships within the family. Put simply, being read to from an early age helps children become confident learners.

AKDN / Lucas Cuervo Moura

In Madagascar, the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) has worked with cacao collector Mr Joma Abdoul Sylvain on upgrading the quality of his cacao beans so that he can sell them at a higher price and improve his revenue. In Africa, during the lean season between harvests, food becomes scarce and people must deal with chronic hunger and extreme poverty. The effects, including low birth weight, cognitive impairment, and malnutrition and stunting can lead to greater lifelong risk for infectious diseases and, in some cases, death. Currently AKF supports 5,500 farmers in the northern region of Diana and aims to scale this into the tens of thousands over the next five years.

AKDN / Lucas Cuervo Moura

The brain develops most rapidly in the first five years of a child’s life. Globally, AKDN’s Early Childhood Development (ECD) initiatives provide 750’000 children ages 0-8 years with nurturing, relevant and quality learning opportunities at costs that are affordable for governments, families and communities. Veva (left) has worked as a childminder for 16 years, and since 2009 has been receiving training and supervision by the ECD staff at Olivais, an early childhood centre in Greater Lisbon, operated by the Aga Khan Foundation.

AKDN / Lucas Cuervo Moura

The Aga Khan Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The Hospital is at the centre of a healthcare system under the Aga Khan Health Service, Tanzania that currently provides quality healthcare to 400,000 Tanzanians. After its US$ 80 million (Tshs. 167 billion) Phase 2 expansion, the Hospital will develop into a leading teaching centre and tertiary health care medical facility for the country and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.

AKDN / Aly Z. Ramji

Opened in 2014 in Toronto, Canada, the Aga Khan Museum is home to over 1,000 masterpieces showcasing the arts of Muslim civilisations from the Iberian Peninsula to China. Its dynamic collection of manuscripts, scientific instruments, paintings, ceramics, and metalwork continues to evolve through new acquisitions. In designing the Aga Khan Museum, Fumihiko Maki, winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, used light as his inspiration. He ensured not only that light is ever-present in the building, but that, depending on the time of day or season, light will animate the building in myriad ways: throwing patterns on the exterior walls of Brazilian granite, enhancing interior spaces, or illuminating the open-roofed courtyard.

AKDN / Janet Kimber

Al-Azhar Park, Cairo, Egypt. With nearly two million visitors a year, the US$ 30 million Azhar Park - a gift from His Highness the Aga Khan to the city of Cairo - not only generates enough funds for its own maintenance (through gate and restaurant receipts), but has proven to be a powerful catalyst for urban renewal in the neighbouring district of Darb al-Ahmar.

AKDN / Christian Richters

In February 2018, His Highness the Aga Khan inaugurated Sunder Nursery, a 90 acre city park in New Delhi, India. The project is undertaken by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which for over a decade, has been engaged in undertaking a unique urban renewal initiative in the Humayun’s Tomb – Nizamuddin area of Delhi. The location of Sunder Nursery, adjacent to Humayun’s Tomb Complex and Nizamuddin Basti, largely follows the Mughal Grand Trunk Road connecting significant monuments. The landscape design aims to enhance the historic character of the nursery, attract visitors and provide a seamless pedestrian connection with Humayun’s Tomb Complex. Photo: Interior, restored plasterwork in the Batashewala Complex, Sunder Nursery.

AKDN / AKTC

Inside the recently restored Shahi Hammam, Lahore, Pakistan. Built in 1634 during the reign of Shah Jahan, the Shahi Hammam is a bathhouse constructed in the tradition of Persian and Turkish bathing establishments. Despite archeological remains indicating the existence and popularity of smaller bathhouses during the Mughal and Sikh eras, it is the only monumental public bathing house in the Subcontinent that survives from that period. In 2016, the Hammam received the Award of Merit as part of the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation.

AKDN / AKTC

The French Medical Institute for Mothers and Children (FMIC) in Kabul, Afghanistan. Managed by the Aga Khan University as part of a partnership with the governments of France and Afghanistan and the French NGO, La Chaine de L’Espoir, it was the first hospital in Afghanistan to perform open and closed heart surgeries. Since its opening, FMIC has recorded nearly 780,000 patient visits and performed more than 22,800 surgeries (of which over 2,300 were cardiac surgeries), 470,000 radiology procedures and 2.5 million laboratory tests. It has also provided care worth more than US$ 25 million at no charge.

AKDN / FMIC

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) is making a lasting impact on the lives of thousands of Ugandan children by providing access to high-quality education. AKDN agencies have been involved in education in Uganda since the 1930s, when the first Aga Khan schools were established, and over the years AKDN’s contribution to the country’s education sector has both broadened and deepened. The Network provides a continuum of services, from early childhood education at the grassroots level through the Madrasa Early Childhood Programme to high-quality tertiary education that benefits students, teachers and school management. The Aga Khan High School is one of only three schools in Uganda accredited to offer the IB programme.

In Bangladesh, the Aga Khan Foundation’s civil society programme, which is integrated with Early Childhood Development (ECD) activities, assists local NGO partners to develop their organisational capacity in the areas of gender equality, financial management, strategic planning, human resource management, resource mobilisation, and monitoring and evaluation, among other key areas.

AKDN / Zul Mukhida

Despite reductions in the national poverty rate and incidence of hunger over the last decade, Mali remains one of the poorest countries in the world. It is still heavily reliant on agriculture. Food insecurity is aggravated by high food and fuel prices as well as environmental risks and climatic shocks, such as drought, flooding, irregular rainfall patterns and locust invasions. To address these challenges, the Aga Khan Foundation began implementation of the Mopti Coordinated Area Development Programme in 2007. Initially, it focused on 35 villages in the areas of Mopti and Djenné. Since 2012, the programme has expanded to 125 new villages. These interventions reach almost 65,000 people in the target areas.

AKDN / Lucas Cuervo Moura

The inaugural campus of the University of Central Asia (UCA) opened in Naryn, Kyrgyz Republic in September 2016. It is the first phase of a larger vision for the 252-hectare site, gifted by the Kyrgyz Government. In 2018, the University opened its second campus in Khorog, Tajikistan. UCA’s mission is to promote the social and economic development of Central Asia, particularly its mountain communities, by offering an internationally recognised standard of higher education, and enabling the peoples of the region to preserve their rich cultural heritage as assets for the future.

AKDN / Gary Otte