The President of Kazakhstan has signed a decree approving the National Strategy for Large-scale Digitalization and the Introduction of Artificial Intelligence Technologies, “Digital Qazaqstan,” until 2029.
According to the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, the new Strategy plans that the comprehensive introduction of AI and the digitalization of industry, subsoil use, logistics and energy will contribute an additional 1.5 percentage points per year to GDP on average by the end of 2029, and the projected volume of comparable market investments over a three-year period will range from USD 10.5 to 16.5 billion.
The strategy will become the main guiding document for the country’s technological development in the coming years and defines a new stage of deep modernization of the state, economy and society in the context of global digital transformation.
As part of the Strategy, digital transformation will encompass three key areas.
The human being is at the center of all transformations within the first direction – digitalization in the interests of citizens. The strategy envisions a continuous, life-stage service model in which public services are tailored to the individual needs of each Kazakhstani citizen, regardless of their region of residence. Proactive support mechanisms will be introduced in the social sphere, eliminating the need to collect additional documents, and key tools – from social benefits to predictive analytics in healthcare and pharmaceutical supply management – will be consolidated within the “Social Wallet” ecosystem. In education, personalized AI development pathways for children from an early age will be launched to help unlock student potential and build advanced digital skills for the next generation. Large-scale AI workforce training will cover both the academic environment and regional IT schools, and the level of generative AI literacy among the population is expected to reach at least 20%.
In the second direction – serving business and the new economy – a managed digital architecture with mandatory instrumentation is being built across the real sector. The strategy provides for deep digital transformation of all core economic sectors: agro-industrial complex, construction, the financial sector, the oil and gas industry and small businesses. The introduction of artificial intelligence, digital twins and intelligent platforms will significantly increase labor productivity, reduce costs and ensure the global competitiveness of domestic businesses. At the same time, conditions are being created for the accelerated development of future industries – robotics, unmanned systems, digital assets and space technologies. The flagship project of this direction will be the creation of a sovereign “AI Hub,” designed as a full-fledged “Data Center Valley.” This hub will serve as the key infrastructure platform in the macroregion, bringing together advanced computing power, research institutes and leading technology companies. An ecosystem for the development and testing of breakthrough solutions in machine learning and big data analytics will be deployed on the basis of the AI Hub. The design capacity of its computing centers will be scaled to 1 GW. Implementation will be carried out through a strategic partnership between government and business. The strategy calls for the active involvement of private investment, international technology companies, development institutions and leading global experts. This synergy of infrastructure and talent is intended to attract major international investors and vendors, at least double the export of Kazakhstani IT services, and bring at least three homegrown unicorn companies to the global market.
In the interests of the state apparatus, deep governance reform is envisioned along with a complete departure from fragmented departmental decision-making. Government agencies are transitioning to a service model of operation, where key public services are delivered exclusively in a proactive manner – seamlessly and without burden on the applicant. The introduction of AI will automate routine administrative processes and fully eliminate duplicated departmental functions. Government decision-making and regulatory modeling are being transferred to rigorous big data analysis (data-driven governance), minimizing the human factor and eliminating managerial errors. In addition, algorithm-driven approaches will be applied to budget planning and allocation: an end-to-end digital oversight system will ensure the transparency and targeted effectiveness of every tenge spent.
The Strategy also places significant emphasis on cybersecurity and the protection of the national information space in the era of active AI development. The document provides for the creation of a resilient digital infrastructure, the introduction of advanced encryption standards and the protection of critical facilities from external threats.
Considerable attention has also been paid to the development of safe urban environments: smart city standards will cover at least 70% of the urban population, shifting public safety to a proactive model. Through AI and behavioral video analytics, incident response times will be reduced by one third, and together with end-to-end protection systems, a national ecosystem for protecting citizens from online fraud will be deployed.
