The Digital Ecosystem Country Assessment (DECA), a flagship initiative of the Digital Strategy, supports USAID Missions to better understand, work with, and support country digital ecosystems. The DECA looks at three pillars of a country’s digital ecosystem: (1) Digital Infrastructure and Adoption; (2) Digital Society, Rights, and Governance; and, (3) Digital Economy. The Kazakhstan DECA was carried out between June 2023 and December 2023. It included desk research, 107 interviews with a variety of stakeholders, and was guided by USAID’s Central Asia Regional Development Cooperation Strategy (RDCS) and the Department of State’s Kazakhstan Integrated Country Strategy (ICS).

Kazakhstan’s growth towards digitalization across its government and economy displays a true potential for innovation and progress. The Government of Kazakhstan (GoK) aims to position Kazakhstan as a regional digital hub, creating several impressive digital initiatives over the last few years. The COVID-19 pandemic has also accelerated the growth of digital financial services (DFS) and e-commerce in Kazakhstan. Despite these improvements, there is still much progress to be made. The country does not yet have a strategic digital literacy roadmap or framework. Poor quality of connectivity in rural areas, a lack of relevant digital content in the Kazakh language, limited digital literacy, foreign-driven disinformation campaigns, and limited consumer protection and safety measures for the digital ecosystem risk widening the digital divide.