BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 1. One of the main areas of cooperation between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Development and Uzbekistan is the education sector, Communications Specialist at USAID Mission to Uzbekistan Sanobar Khudaybergenova told Trend.
According to Khudaybergenova, the USAID has pledged to allocate up to $55 million over seven years to support reform initiatives of Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Preschool and School Education. The amount of money also covers USAID’s four-year program worth $29.5 million to improve reading skills and math among students of elementary school, enhance information and communications technology (ICT) instruction from 5th to 11th grade, as well as to improve knowledge of English in 1-11 grades.
“In 2021, USAID piloted new curriculum and materials for English as a foreign language instruction in 213 schools. We are thrilled that the Ministry rolled out this instructional package on a national scale during the 2022-2023 academic years, printing USAID-supported textbooks for the entire public school system - approximately 6.5 million students and tens of thousands of teachers in over 10,000 schools,” Khudaybergenova said.
She noted that the agency established cooperation with this Central Asian country in 1993. Over the 30 years of partnership, USAID has implemented several projects not only in the education sector but also in the sectors such as economic growth, democracy and governance, as well as healthcare.
As for the health sector, the communication specialist noted that USAID invests $6 million per year in the National Tuberculosis Program to create shorter, accessible outpatient care focused on early detection and treatment of this disease.
Khudaybergenova further noted that the agency also supported Uzbekistan during the picks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To fight COVID, we provided over $16 million to support the Government of Uzbekistan’s Republican Sanitary and Epidemiological Services’ COVID response and coordinated the arrival and distribution of 9.6 million doses of U.S. Government-donated COVID vaccines,” she added.