Mariam Sadat is one proud woman. She’s proud to be Afghan, proud of her country’s progress in the last decade, and proud of the famously good fruits and nuts that grow from Afghan soil.

That’s why she called her rapidly expanding company, the Afghan Pride Association. While it’s a profit-making enterprise, it’s also a network of 350 women across three provinces in Afghanistan. The women are farmers and they are using state-of-the-art solar technology that Mariam has acquired for them to process high quality dried fruits and nuts native to Afghanistan, like pistachios, almonds, raisins and walnuts. Mariam sells the packaged products to shops and hotels, and she regularly does the exhibitions circuits in Kabul.

Over lunch in a Kabul restaurant in February, her two daughters in tow, she tells me about how she got the idea for this line of business when she was employed with the Afghan Women’s Business Council as a trainer. Travelling around the country to train women farmers for the Council, she witnessed how women in agriculture toiled long hours but then...More >>