Hanif Sufizada

Hanif Sufizada

Mr. Sufizada is an employee with the Center for Afghanistan Studies, overseeing educational outreach and partnerships with universities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with a goal of creating similar partnerships across the entire Central and South Asia region. He holds a professional master’s degree in public administration from Cornell University with concentration in international development. His bachelor’s degree is in economics and public administration from Osmania University.

Prior to joining University of Nebraska at Omaha, Mr. Sufizada was the Director for Private Sector Development at the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL), Kabul Afghanistan. As a part of his duties, Mr. Sufizada helped connect farmers and agribusinesses to national and international markets. He ensured that both small scale and commercial farmers have no serious issues in various stages of value chains, stressed the need that agriculture produces are professionally processed, packaged and eventually has a phytosanitary certificate before it reaches to international markets. He also attracted national and international investors to invest in Afghan agriculture through long-term lease or public private-partnership mechanism.

In addition, he was also a senior technical advisor on governance to the Mayor of Kabul. Mr. Sufizada worked closely with the mayor and his senior staff in developing governance policies, procedures, department terms of references and designing economic development packages for various districts of the city. He also worked closely with US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in the city infrastructure development.

He has more than seven years of experience working for the United Nations in developing countries, including Liberia, Nepal and Pakistan where his focus was economic and political stability through private sector engagement.