Karim Khoja has been chief executive officer of Roshan, Afghanistan’s leading telecommunications provider, since January 2003. He is also an independent consultant and adviser to the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, an international- development organization focused on Afghanistan.
Roshan is Afghanistan’s largest telecommunications provider. Nearly a decade ago we entered war-ravaged Afghanistan with the ambitious goal of harnessing the power of mobile technology to catalyze reconstruction and economic development. Thirty years of conflict had decimated infrastructure, created chronic security risks, encouraged corruption, and left most Afghans in abject poverty. Once renowned for its thriving cultural and literary traditions, Afghanistan was now 70 percent illiterate. Among the working population, few potential employees had the education and skills necessary to support a viable business enterprise. Despite these obstacles, we viewed Afghanistan as an untapped reservoir of human potential.
Roshan is part of a new generation of companies that are redefining the concept of a social enterprise in emerging markets. This approach derives from our majority investor, the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), which fosters entrepreneurship and builds economically sound enterprises in the developing world.
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