The disintegration of the Soviet Union has severely affected the education systems of its successor states Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. The economic collapse of the new independent states resulted in dramatic underfinancing of universities, and thus in lack of teaching staff, lack of young scientists, lack of infrastructure, and lack of computerization. e-Learning and Retraining is the natural answer to many of the pressing problems in university education and the development of a modern knowledge-based economy. Consequently, the principal goal of CANDI is the establishment of a sustainable e-Learning infrastructure which matches the specific needs, problems and requirements of these two countries. In particular, CANDI will support both e-Learning for university education and Retraining of industrial staff.The CANDI project will achieve this ambitious goal by a close strategic collaboration with European partner universities. The European partners will provide the starting impetus for a sustainable e-Learning framework in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. To achieve sustainability, CANDI foresees multiple instruments to ensure active participation of young university staff.CANDI will have big European and Central Asian players as well as smaller Central Asian institutions which are natural targets for e-Learning. Four of the current partners have very successfully collaborated in the previous TEMPUS project COCUZ (CD JEP-25221-2004) which established a Master program in Compuational Science in Uzbekistan.CANDI is planned as a three year project, where local competence in e-Learning is built up in several stages. Year 1 will focus on a needs analysis and the development of a first simple e-Learning platform along with first e-Learning courses. In parallel, CANDI will train local young scientists to use and develop the platform. Based on the demonstrators and field experience available at the start of Year 2, the consortium will engage industry and universities to define a roadmap of the platform features and course contents to be developed in the pilot phase of Years 2 and 3. Throughout Years 1 to 3, CANDI will implement e-Learning prototypes (with respect to both course content and e-Learning platform development) based on the input by European researchers.Technically, CANDI will primarily use free open-source teaching platforms such as Moodle or TUD’s Digital Classroom for e-Learning. The CANDI platform will support multiple languages (EN,UZB,KAZ,RUS), and allow for bidirectional flow of knowledge between partner institutions. Due tothe large differences in network quality over the countries, CANDI will support a broad mix of e-Learning paradigms ranging from online courses with streaming video and video conferencing all the way to offline media such as DVDs.CANDI puts major emphasis on sustainability through the inclusion and activization of young university staff through training in platform development, course content development, English language, and soft skills; young university staff will be given ample opportunities to interact with their European peers both in Europe and Central Asia. In addition, CANDI will work closely with university administration and governments to ensure long-term support of the project results.