“My first memory of entrepreneurship is my father’s shop in an open bazaar in Vahdat, Tajikistan.
I was maybe eight years old, watching him negotiate with suppliers, arrange displays, and build something from nothing in a post-Soviet economy that offered very little. I didn’t have a word for what he was doing then. I do now.”
Nilofar Paiwand Ali is part of AKFC’s 2025-2026 cohort of International Youth Fellows, and was placed in Bishkek at Accelerate Prosperity. Read her Dispatch for her reflections on entrepreneurship, opportunity, and hope.
