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Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Buley.

Today we head to Afghanistan, a country where almost 15 million people face severe hunger,

and according to the UN is experiencing the sharpest surge in malnutrition ever recorded.

The economic situation has been worsened by devastating earthquakes and a recent 48-hour internet blackout.

The country has relied heavily on aid, but when the US-backed government fell in

2021 to be replaced by the Taliban, the economy contracted drastically, and the amount of

international aid coming in fell sharply. So could the private sector provide a route to

recovery for Afghanistan's economy? There is no future for Afghanistan without its private sector.

And it has also been shown in the past that you cannot build your country with aid money.

Boosting Afghanistan's private sector.

That's all coming up on today's program.

The only reason I downsized was because there were no sales. When there are no sales,

production stops accordingly. This is the reality for a children's clothes manufacturer in the

Afghan capital Kabul. They were describing their situation to the Afghanistan Analyst Network, which is a non-profit

research organization, and their words are spoken by a BBC producer. When people struggle to buy

food, how they can think about clothes. Most people make clothes at home because there is a tailor

in every family, especially women.

Because most of them know how to sew.

They come to the shop and buy one, two or three types of clothing.

Copy them at home and then sell the copies cheaply.

They can sell the clothes cheaply because they have no rent to pay, no taxes, no employees'

...