On January 12th, the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved $7 million in additional financing to the ongoing Digital Central Asia South Asia (Digital CASA) project for the Kyrgyz Republic. This additional financing complements the original $50 million Digital CASA – Kyrgyz Republic Project approved in March 2018 to support the nation’s digital transformation through increasing access to affordable internet, private investment in the ICT sector, and improving the provision of digital government services.
“The Digital CASA – Kyrgyz Republic Project supports the country’s digital transformation agenda and the National Sustainable Development Strategy 2018-2040,” stated Naveed Hassan Naqvi, the World Bank Country Manager for the Kyrgyz Republic. “The project is expected to foster sustainable and inclusive growth by helping bridge the digital divide, especially in rural areas of the country. It also aims to enhance the provision of digital government services, thereby promoting efficient and transparent public administration.”
Naqvi stated that the funding will enable 800,000 citizens of the Kyrgyz Republic to access better and more affordable internet services, thus bringing the internet penetration rate in the country to 57%. Among the key goals of the project is laying 2,500 kilometers of fiber-optic network across the country, establishing two cross-border fiber-optic links, and building a government cloud (G-Cloud) infrastructure.
The Digital CASA – Kyrgyz Republic project will ultimately help integrate the Kyrgyz Republic and other landlocked countries of Central Asia and parts of South Asia into the regional and global digital economy, thereby enabling these countries to reap the benefits of digitization.
“The additional financing is critical for closing the financing gap caused by the need to increase the initially planned capacity for data storage and processing on the G-Cloud,” said Sandra Sargent, World Bank Senior Digital Development Specialist and Project Task Team Leader. “G-Cloud is a government cloud platform that serves as one of the key pillars of digital public infrastructure and will provide storage, processing power, and computing capacity to support e-government services, as well as handle large amounts of data.”
