The headquarters of the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva welcomed a milestone signing ceremony. Kazakhstan has officially signed an agreement with the International Telecommunication Union to establish the first batch of ITU global acceleration centers. As one of the few physical core platforms directly connected to the ITU headquarters in the CIS region, the center will focus on four major areas: digital innovation, AI capacity building, smart government solutions, and regional digital cooperation. From ranking 24th globally in e-government to directly connecting with the core circle of international digital governance, Kazakhstan is accelerating its transformation from a resource exporting country to a Eurasian digital hub.

Accelerate the settlement of the center in Kazakhstan

The ITU Acceleration Center is the core carrier of the United Nations system to empower member states with digital implementation, covering five major functions: trend analysis, technological innovation, small and medium-sized enterprise incubation, policy pilot, and ecological collaboration. The two major directions of smart government and regional digital cooperation have strong regional leverage value. The electronic government system in Kazakhstan has achieved online processing of over 1300 public services, with 90% of them, and over 15 million registered users nationwide. The United Nations e-Government Development Index shows that Kazakhstan ranks 24th globally, and its online service index ranks among the top ten in the world. Its independently developed digital home card system relies on hundreds of socio-economic indicators to accurately identify and assist groups, and has completed over 2.2 million social service deliveries, forming a unique digital technology barrier for government affairs. The center will fill the gap in cross-border digital collaboration in Central Asia, establish a unified regional digital collaboration framework, and lead the establishment of regional digital standards, circulation rules, and cooperation models.

The digital ecosystem is becoming increasingly perfect

Kazakhstan has established the most comprehensive and internationally aligned digital rule of law and industrial ecosystem in Central Asia. Astana Science and Technology Innovation Park gathers more than 1500 enterprises, with annual revenue exceeding 1 billion US dollars. It gathers 150 AI science and technology innovation enterprises, and multiple enterprises have achieved valuations of billions of yuan. We have successively introduced the first artificial intelligence law in Central Asia and a new version of the digital code, established a standardized compliance system, and the compliance qualifications can radiate to the entire 180 million population market of the Eurasian Economic Union. Kazakhstan is actively running for a seat on the ITU Council, striving to have a say in global digital regulations. The digital data protection system is benchmarked against the EU GDPR, and the Astana International Financial Center adopts the Anglo American legal system to support English court hearings and international arbitration, providing the best institutional guarantee for cross-border cooperation among Chinese enterprises in Central Asia. Keywords: Central Asian news and information AI、 Digital Hub

Seize the digital high ground

The golden window period for digital infrastructure in Central Asia is fleeting. Whoever takes the lead in completing infrastructure layout, establishing industry standards, and gathering industrial talents will dominate the future regional digital cooperation pattern. The landing of the ITU Acceleration Center is a key milestone for Kazakhstan's layout of the Eurasian digital hub, marking its formal mastery of the core initiative in Central Asian digital innovation, standard setting, and regional collaboration. For Chinese green construction, infrastructure, and digital technology enterprises under the SCO framework, Kazakhstan has become a core strategic pivot for layout in Central Asia and deepening cultivation in Eurasia. Capturing its standardized and internationalized digital new ecosystem, relying on its regional hub advantages to implement layout, will become a key breakthrough for enterprises to explore the Central Asian blue ocean market.Editor/Gao Xue