Distinguished guests,
Dear colleagues,

It is a pleasure to join you today at the National Think Tank Forum, “Envisioning the Future: From Reflecting on Achievements to Shaping a New Agenda”, as we reflect not only on Kazakhstan’s achievements, but also on the choices that will shape its future.

First and foremost, allow me to extend my sincere congratulations to the people of Kazakhstan on the adoption of the new Constitution.

The new Constitution signals an important evolution in Kazakhstan’s development vision, placing human capital, innovation, knowledge and the responsible use of natural resources at the heart of long-term competitiveness and sustainable development. It also reinforces the importance of strong institutions and effective governance.

This vision closely aligns with what we see when looking at Kazakhstan through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Kazakhstan has made substantial progress in expanding access to services, infrastructure and economic opportunities. Country Human Development Index has increased by more than 21 per cent since 1990 placing Kazakhstan in the very high human development category. This is also reflected in its economic performance. Over the past five years, GDP has increased by more than 55 per cent, while GDP per capita has risen by almost 45 per cent. 

These are important achievements. But they also mark a transition to a more demanding stage of development.

Increasingly, the focus is shifting from access to quality, from expansion to productivity, and from short-term gains to long-term resilience.

Let me highlight four areas where this shift is particularly visible.

First, social vulnerability is changing.

Kazakhstan has virtually eliminated extreme poverty. Yet around 5 per cent of the population remains below the national poverty line.

The next challenge is therefore not simply reducing poverty further. It is strengthening income resilience, social mobility and the quality of employment, while ensuring that economic or demographic shocks do not push vulnerable households backwards.

We see a similar transition in Health. Life expectancy has increased by more than five years, reaching almost 76 years, while maternal and child mortality continues to decline.

These are important achievements. But longer lives also require a stronger focus on quality healthcare, prevention, healthy ageing and sustainable social protection systems.

Second, in human capital, the challenge is increasingly one of quality.

Kazakhstan has achieved high levels of educational coverage. But participation in education does not automatically translate into the skills required by a rapidly changing economy.

The question today is not only how many years people spend in education, but what knowledge, skills and capabilities they bring into society and the labor market.

This matters even more in the age of digital transformation and artificial intelligence.

And it connects directly to employment. With unemployment at around 4.5 per cent, the challenge is increasingly not simply to create more jobs, but to create more productive, higher-quality and higher-value jobs.

Education, skills, innovation and employment therefore need to be seen as one development chain.

Third, Kazakhstan has built strong infrastructure, but the next frontier is innovation and productivity.

Kazakhstan has established an impressive digital foundation. It has entered the global top 25 in the UN E-Government Development Index. Connectivity has expanded rapidly, public services have become increasingly digital, and technology-intensive production is growing.

Yet expenditure on research and development remains at around 0.16 per cent of GDP.

This contrast is telling.

Kazakhstan has been successful in building the physical and digital foundations of modernization. The next challenge is to convert these foundations into domestic innovation, technological capability and productivity growth.

This will require much stronger connections between science, universities, business and industry, and an ecosystem that enables technologies not only to be adopted, but also to be developed, commercialized and scaled.

Fourth, sustainable development increasingly requires us to look beyond individual sectors.

Water is a good example.

Access to drinking water has improved significantly. Yet pressure on water resources is also increasing.

So, the question is changing from “How do we expand access?” to “How do we manage an increasingly constrained resource more efficiently and sustainably?”

For Kazakhstan, water cannot be separated from agriculture, food security, energy, climate and ecosystems.

This is precisely why a Nexus approach is becoming increasingly important.

The same applies to Energy.

Kazakhstan has near-universal access to electricity, while the share of renewable electricity generation has more than doubled to around 7 per cent.

This is important progress.

Yet the broader energy system remains carbon intensive. The challenge is therefore to move from incremental change towards a structural energy transition, while safeguarding energy security and economic competitiveness.

Fifth, national progress must translate into more balanced regional development.

Reducing regional disparities requires stronger local institutions, better data and meaningful community engagement. Local authorities need the capacity to respond to different territorial needs, while citizens should have a stronger voice in shaping priorities.

Regional inclusion, community participation and smart, data-driven governance must advance together.

Distinguished experts,

Taken together, these trends point to a broader conclusion.

Kazakhstan is entering a Second Generation of Sustainable Development Challenges:

from poverty reduction to resilience;

from educational access to skills and quality;

from employment to productivity;

from infrastructure to innovation;

from water access to resource security;

from energy availability to energy transformation;

and from nationally aggregated progress to more balanced, participatory and responsive development across regions.

This brings us to the future.

What do these shifts mean for Kazakhstan’s long-term trajectory, and which policy choices can deliver the most sustainable outcomes?

To explore this question, UNDP worked with the Pardee Center at the University of Denver to conduct long-term scenario modelling for Kazakhstan.

We examined five alternative pathways centered on economic growth, human capital, institutional reform, climate resilience, and an integrated scenario bringing these dimensions together.

The exercise was not intended to predict a single future.

It was designed to understand which policy choices create the strongest and most durable development outcomes over time.

And several findings stand out.

First, economic growth alone is not sufficient.

Investment and economic reforms can generate rapid gains. But over the longer term, the Effective Governance scenario begins to outperform a purely economic pathway. Strong institutions, policy predictability, accountability and citizen engagement become increasingly important drivers of development.

Second, human capital is not simply a social investment - it is an economic investment.

Sustained investment in health, education and skills strengthens productivity and economic performance over time.

This becomes particularly important as Kazakhstan’s demographic structure changes. By 2050, the number of older people is projected to exceed 3 million, while the overall population will continue to grow.

This will reshape demand for healthcare, social protection, infrastructure and employment.

Third, modelling points to a changing geography of vulnerability.

Extreme poverty has largely been overcome, but broader forms of deprivation remain, and vulnerability is expected to become increasingly urban.

Urbanization, internal migration, housing pressures, informal employment and unequal access to opportunities could create new forms of structural vulnerability within Kazakhstan’s cities.

So what does this mean for policy?

I would highlight four priorities.

First, focus increasingly on quality and outcomes - not only access and coverage.
In education, healthcare, employment and public services, the next generation of indicators must tell us not only who has access, but what results that access produces.

Second, connect human capital, innovation and productivity much more closely.
Skills, research, technology, enterprise and labor-market policy need to reinforce one another.

Third, accelerate integrated management of natural resources and the energy transition.
Water, food, energy, climate and ecosystems must increasingly be addressed as an interconnected system.

And fourth, strengthen anticipatory governance.

Demographic, technological, climate and urban transformations are already under way. Policy needs to anticipate these changes rather than respond to them after they occur.

Therefore, Kazakhstan’s next phase of development cannot rely on any single driver.

It will require productive growth, stronger human capital, resilient institutions and sustainable management of natural resources to advance together.

Perhaps this is the central message from both the SDG assessment and our long-term modelling:

Kazakhstan’s next development frontier is not primarily about expanding systems. It is about transforming their quality.

And the choices made today will determine not only progress towards 2030, but Kazakhstan’s competitiveness, resilience and social cohesion for decades to come.

Thank you.