The material is prepared based on speeches at the panel session ‘Central Asia as a digital HUB of Eurasia’. The speakers on the panel: Azis Abakirov, Kyrgyz software and services developer’s association Chairman, Founder of High-Tech Park; Ayauzhan Almakhova, Director of the Department of Startup Ecosystem Development, ‘Zerde’ Holding; Mansur Hakimov, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Tajikistan; Oleg Petrov, Senior Program Officer, Digital Development, World Bank (moderator); Dilshod Zufarov, Chief Investment Officer, ‘Technological park of program products and information technologies’ LLC (IT Park Uzbekistan).

Central Asia, located in the center of the Eurasian continent, has historically played the role of a link between Europe and Asia. Today, it is digitalization that is becoming a key factor in increasing the region’s competitiveness and restoring its historical role as a bridge between Europe and Asia.

In most countries of Central Asia, both local authorities and private business have made significant efforts to digitalize the local economy, government, and create their own IT industry.

In Uzbekistan, the authorities set 4 goals for the digitalization of the country:

1. Development of digital infrastructure. 23 million, of the 34 million people in the country, are provided with mobile Internet today. The task has been set to increase this figure over the next year to 26 million. At the same time, the rural population is significantly less provided with access to mobile Internet than the urban one. According to the state digitalization program, by 2020 it will cover all rural schools, preschool and medical institutions with broadband Internet access.
2. Development of digital skills and competencies. More than 60% of the population of Uzbekistan is young people. 21 specialized IT universities work in the country to educate young people, including 7 representations of foreign universities from the USA, Great Britain, India, South Korea and other countries. The authorities set the task to deploy regional centers for training programmers by the end of 2020. Together with the Government of the United Arab Emirates, the One Million Programmers Program has been launched to train a million young people for the IT industry over the next 5 years.
3. Development of the state digital management system. Over the past three years, 700 government services have been digitized. As a result, more than 10 million public online services were provided to the population. Over 15 million online transactions over the past year have been made by the country’s population to pay for state services.
4. Development of the digital industry. In July 2019, a software and information technology park was created – the IT park of Uzbekistan, with a total area of ​​17 thousand square meters. The park has already registered 330 resident companies, which employ 3.5 thousand specialists. Resident companies of the IT park are exempt from all types of taxes and customs payments. Start-up projects within the IT park are provided with free premises, access to the Internet and other infrastructure, incubation and acceleration programs.

In September 2019, the first venture capital fund was created in Uzbekistan to attract investment in startup projects. The IT park has the authority from the state to directly invest in startup projects, to attract foreign and local investments.

In Kazakhstan, within the framework of the state program “Digital Kazakhstan” in 2018, the international technology park of IT startups Astana Hub began to operate. The main goal of the Astana Hub is to become a center for the development of innovative projects, to give an impetus to the development of startup teams and to bring all participants of the IT industry in one place so that they can work in a coordinated manner. That is, to create such a coworking, where young entrepreneurs who want to start their own business will have access to businessmen, investors, government agencies, whose help will be useful to them. For this, conditions have been created at the legislative, organizational and technical levels.

The total area of the park is 24 thousand square meters. Currently, the park’s premises are 100 percent full, including 17 R&D centers of such companies as Huawei, Cisco and others.

At the end of 2018, a law was passed exempting residents of Astana Hub from such taxes as individual income tax, corporate tax and non-resident tax. For investors, exemption from tax on dividends and a simplified mechanism for attracting foreign specialists for up to five years is provided.

For its residents, Astana Hub organizes a road show to attract investment in the United States, Finland, China and other countries. As a result, 130 Astana Hub resident companies attracted about USD 82 mln in their projects.

In order to train specialists for Astana Hub resident companies, Astana University and a programming school opened on the territory of Astana Expo.

In Kyrgyzstan, the development of the IT industry is primarily not due to public but private investment, on the initiative of local entrepreneurs. About 70 companies with 700 employees are registered at the local High Tech Park. The total revenue of these companies last year was about USD 15 mln.

The main problem holding back the development of the IT industry in Kyrgyzstan is the lack of qualified specialists. The IT park plans to prepare 50 thousand programmers by 2030. In several large cities of the country, IT academies have been created for this. Special programs have been developed with the help of international donors aimed at retraining women. As a result of the program, 90% of women who completed retraining courses found jobs in the IT industry. A similar program for people with disabilities also showed high results: 50% of the graduates of the program found work in a new specialty.

In 2003 in Tajikistan, a state strategy for the implementation of information technologies was developed. As a result, many public services are provided in digital form. In particular, Tajikistan became the first Central Asian country to introduce electronic visas for visitors arriving in the country.

The World Bank is implementing the Digital CASA program in Central and South Asia whose main task is to provide the local population with high-speed Internet access and increase the capacity of local networks for the transit of information flows, and significantly reduce the price for such transit. The project is under implementation in Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan, in preparation – in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, negotiations are underway on participation in the project with Tajikistan. The result of the Digital CASA project will be the formation in Central Asia of a new digital hub for data transit between Europe and Asia. It is envisaged to connect Central Asia with Europe within the framework of the project, in particular, through the territory of Azerbaijan.

The implementation of the Digital CASA project will provide fast Internet access for Central Asia citizens, primarily in rural areas, increase regional connectivity, bring regional cooperation to a new level, and enable Central Asian countries to generate additional transit revenues in the field of communications.

Panel participants put forward a number of new ideas for creating a single digital space in Central Asia:

– Creation of a single visa space for the IT industry in Central Asia. This will make the Central Asian IT industry more attractive both for specialists from abroad and for international investors who can create their representative offices in one of the countries, while ensuring the free movement of their representatives throughout the region

– Creation of a single economic space for the IT industry in Central Asia, which would ensure the free movement of not only specialists, but also investments, innovations, patents, as well as the introduction of uniform IT standards for the region

– Establishment of the post of a single “special representative” of the Central Asian IT industry, who would have the authority to represent the region’s industry before Western partners, investment funds and the global IT industry

– A single system for the protection of intellectual property, including the creation of a single platform for the registration of patents and intellectual property rights that would apply throughout Central Asia

– Creation of a permanent “nomadic forum” dedicated to the development of the IT industry in Central Asia, which would be held alternately in each of the countries of the region.

The panel participants suggested paying special attention to the development of the IT industry in the Ferghana Valley, a unique region lying on the territory of three states of Central Asia – Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. This most remoted landlocked area is home to 15 million people, most of whom are young people. It is a critically large mass of young people living in a fairly compact region that makes it possible to distinguish it as the most promising in terms of the development of the mass IT industry.