The official visit of the Armenian President last week was concluded by a splashy announcement that the building of the “Friendship Bridge,” a new infrastructure project approved by the Georgian and Armenian Governments in late 2014, will start construction in 2017, and will be completed in under two years.

Matsatso Tepnadze, ISET class 2012, has been recently appointed head of the division of planning for infrastructure projects at the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure of Georgia (MRDI). This division is in charge of elaborating project selection and planning methods, based on a systemic evaluation of strategic public infrastructure projects.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly independent state underwent serious turmoil, including civil war, deteriorated governance, depreciation of critical infrastructure, and endemic corruption. But after the Rose Revolution in 2003, the country began to implement major political and economic reforms

Speaking at the opening of the Tbilisi Silk Road Forum, Georgia’s new Minister of Foreign Affairs Giorgi Kvirikashvili evoked electric circuitry as a metaphor to describe the future of rail and road connections between Europe and Asia. A graduate of the prestigious math and physics Komarov School, Kvirikashvili explained that a sequential circuit – a simple chain – crucially depends on each and every one of its links.

On August 20, 2015, a strong hailstorm hit Georgia, devastating crops and infrastructure in eastern Kakheti. In Kvareli alone, the hailstorm destroyed about 1,300ha of Saperavi and 1,000ha of Rkatsiteli grapes, affecting more than 500 families. This was only one in a string of natural disasters striking Georgian farmers in recent years.