The goal of the USAID/Central Asia’s 2020 – 2025 Regional Development Cooperation Strategy (RDCS) is: A Self-Reliant Central Asia that is Interconnected, Independent, and Resistant to Malign Influences. The USAID/Central Asia Mission and the RDCS 2020-2025 are focused on accelerating development for the region and supporting key objectives in the U.S. Strategy for Central Asia. The regional development objectives (RDO) that support the RDCS goal align with the restructuring of USAID’s presence in Central Asia, which reorients our work around fostering Central Asia’s ability to plan, finance, and implement solutions to its development challenges.
To further the U.S. priorities in Central Asia, USAID/Central Asia identified five priority areas for regional support: energy, trade, transboundary water and environmental management, countering violent extremism, and combating trafficking in persons. Based on these areas, USAID will advance the RDCS goal through two RDOs:
- RDO 1: Regional Connectivity Strengthened
- RDO 2: Resilience to Regional Vulnerabilities Advanced
In making strategic choices for this RDCS, USAID/Central Asia is guided by lessons learned from the previous strategy, assessments of regional platforms, the intersection of U.S. policy and USAID’s value-add to U.S. policy, and how best to align regional activities with bilateral efforts. USAID/Central Asia’s role will be to implement programming that addresses issues that are regional in nature, achieve shared regional goals and objectives, and uniquely complement bilateral efforts.