Higher Education Development Project (HEDP)

Afghanistan requires a major increase in the number of university graduates to create a modern, well-educated workforce. In particular, the number of female graduates needs to increase sharply to promote gender equity and empowerment. The Higher Education Development Project (HEDP) consists of the following two components: (i) Higher Education Development Program; and (ii) Program Operations and Technical Support. Both these components will be scaled up under the Additional Financing (AF). The primary activities to be scaled up under the first component are: (i) provision of an additional 150 faculty with scholarships to pursue either Master’s degrees or above in priority disciplines, at least one-third of whom will be female staff; (ii) grants to support an additional 60 research projects, with at least twenty-percent of these projects to be undertaken by female academic staff or teams which include female academics; and (iii) the training of 500 additional faculty in Outcome-Based Education (OBE) and StudentCentered Learning (SCL). The second component will also be scaled up accordingly, to enable the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) to accommodate the extension of the closing date by two years and achieve the project objectives. The Project is currently implemented across all 24 public universities and 12 higher education institutes in Afghanistan.