Aga Khan Development Network Activities in Education
Founded and guided by His Highness the Aga Khan, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) brings together a number of development agencies, institutions and programmes that work primarily in the poorest parts of Asia and Africa. AKDN is a contemporary endeavour of the Ismaili Imamat to realise the social conscience of Islam through institutional action. AKDN agencies conduct their programmes without regard to the faith, origin or gender.

In addition to the Aga Khan Education Services (AKES), AKDN’s other social development agencies contribute in a variety of ways and at many levels to the educational needs of developed and developing countries. The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) works to improve the quality of basic education through grants to governments and civil society institutions. Amongst a wide agenda that also encompasses health, rural development, gender and human resource development, the Foundation works to ensure better early caring and learning environments for young children, increase the access to education, keep children in school longer and raise levels of academic achievement.

Aga Khan Health Services
The Aga Khan Heath Services (AKHS) works closely with AKES and other agencies to build and promote healthy environments in schools and homes. It also provides primary and curative health care in India, Kenya, Tajikistan and Tanzania through a network of 325 health centres, dispensaries, hospitals, diagnostic centres and community health outlets. The Aga Khan Planning and Building Services (AKPBS) provides material, technical assistance, construction management and project implementation services for the construction of schools in rural and urban areas. Its overall aims are to improve the built environment through design and construction, village planning, natural hazard mitigation, environmental sanitation and improved water supply systems.

Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development
The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), with its affiliates the Tourism Promotion Services, Industrial Promotion Service, Financial Services, Aviation Services and Media Services, seeks to strengthen the role of the private sector in developing countries by supporting private sector initiatives in the development process. The Fund and the Foundation also encourage government policies that foster what the Aga Khan first called an “enabling environment” of favourable legislative and fiscal structures. Through its extensive human resource development programmes and promotion of local staff, it has raised standards and provided employment for some of the best and brightest.

Aga Khan Trust for Culture
The Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s (AKTC) education activities range from financial support for the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States and ArchNet, a growing archive of resources for the study of architecture in Islamic societies, to the Humanities Project in Central Asia, which is developing a core, introductory humanities curriculum based on a wide range of cultural traditions for use in the universities of Central Asia. The Trust also administers the Music Initiative in Central Asia, which works to preserve and promote the music of the region through support to tradition bearers and their students.

University of Central Asia
The University of Central Asia, the world’s first university dedicated to education and research on mountain regions and societies, offers programmes in continuing education and training, degree programmes in the development professions and undergraduate degrees. It is located on three campuses in Khorog, Tajikistan, Tekeli, Kazakhstan and Naryn, Kyrgyz Republic.

Aga Khan University
Aga Khan University, headquartered in Karachi, is a major centre for education, training and research in the health sciences and teacher education. Chartered as Pakistan’s first private international university in 1983, it has since established education programmes and institutes in Eastern Africa, Central Asia and the United Kingdom.

While each agency pursues its own mandate, all of them work together within the overarching framework of the Aga Khan Development Network so that their different pursuits can interact and reinforce one another. Their common goal is to help the poor achieve a level of self-reliance whereby they are able to plan their own livelihoods and help those even more needy than themselves.