Knowledge and Resource Sharing through Partnerships

Knowledge and Resource Sharing through Partnerships


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Children play between classes at one of the 14 schools supported by the Aga Khan Foundation in Aswan, Egypt.
Photo: AKF / Jean-Luc RayPartnerships between like-minded institutions can have enormous benefits - for scaling up proven programmes, reinforcing programme elements and, not least, for sharing best practices. For example, a group that is innovative but inexperienced in scaling up a project can call on another organisation’s expertise.
In Aswan, Egypt, the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) has partnered with the Ministries of Education and Social Solidarity to introduce early childhood development (ECD) programmes. Building on AKF’s experience in ECD in both Africa and Asia, the partnership is looking to find ways to boost pre-school enrolments, which are low due to the inability of poor families to afford the annual tuition.
"Meeting the development challenge will continue to be a complex matter – one which will not only demand the very best of government, civil society and private enterprise, but will also require new efforts to coordinate and harmonise their various energies."
Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Enabling Environment Conference, Kabul, Afghanistan
4 June 2007The First Microfinance Foundation (FMF), a subsidiary of the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM), is hoping to help more families afford the tuition. In 2008, with the assistance of a credit guarantee from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), it began scaling up support to poor and low income families and small businesses in the Aswan Governorate. In addition to the 23,000 loans, worth 45 million Egyptian pounds, that FMF has already extended to small businesses in Aswan, the partnership will allow FMF to extend an additional 80,000 loans. FMF’s regional network will also expand to nine cities, eventually covering 75 percent of Aswan Governorate’s villages.
Partnerships are critical for area development projects that often start with experimentation but then reach a level of maturity at which they can expand. In many instances, AKDN agencies have partnered with other local and international agencies to engage their specific expertise to move projects forward, or to pool fi nancial resources for the wider expansion of a successful programme. AKDN has also signed strategic agreements and protocols with governments, bilateral and multilateral organisations and non-state actors.