Opinions - The Times Of Central Asia

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New Uzbekistan

Opinion: The Reform Paradox for Uzbekistan: Global Capital, Political Control

In mid-May, Uzbekistan is preparing to take a major step onto the global financial stage – one that reflects its broader, decade-long push to open its economy to international investors. The country's National Investment Fund (UzNIF), a $2.4 billion vehicle holding minority stakes in 13 strategic state-owned enterprises, is preparing to list 30% of its capital on the London and Tashkent stock exchanges — the first time such a state-backed investment vehicle is being listed on international equity markets. For President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the move signals that Uzbekistan wants to be seen as an investable, reforming, and globally connected state. But the planned listing also captures the central paradox of Uzbekistan's current trajectory: the country is opening economically while remaining politically closed. Foreign investors are being invited in. State assets are being partially exposed to market discipline. Capital markets are being developed. Yet the political system remains tightly managed, with limited opposition, weak institutional pluralism, and few independent channels for releasing social pressure. That is why Uzbekistan's stability should not be read only as a strength. It should also be read as a system test: can controlled modernization keep producing legitimacy without creating political mechanisms for absorbing the expectations it generates? Mirziyoyev as a Controlled Modernizer Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s political style is not that of a frontline strongman constantly mobilizing society against enemies. His approach is administrative, developmental, and transactional: reform from above, personnel control, investment attraction, infrastructure, market opening, and the redistribution of economic flows. In this sense, Mirziyoyev is best understood not as a liberal reformer in the Western sense, but as a controlled modernizer. The reform agenda is real. Uzbekistan has moved to attract foreign capital, open selected state assets, improve its business image, and position itself as a more predictable investment destination. The UzNIF listing fits this broader effort: it is designed to deepen capital markets, signal openness to international investors, and show that the state is willing to place parts of its economic architecture under market scrutiny. But the political architecture remains tightly managed. Freedom House continues to rate Uzbekistan as "Not Free" — 12 points out of 100 in its 2026 report — citing the concentration of power in the executive branch, the absence of a genuine parliamentary opposition, and severe restrictions on independent journalists and human rights defenders. This is the central tension: Uzbekistan is reforming economically, but not politically. [caption id="attachment_48249" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] Tashkent has opened up to investment over the past decade. Image: Joe Luc Barnes[/caption] Growth as Legitimacy For now, the model works because growth provides legitimacy. The World Bank expects Uzbekistan's economy to grow by around 6.4% in 2026, following 7.7% growth in 2025 – supported by domestic demand, private consumption, and continued investment. Public debt remains comparatively moderate at around 28% of GDP, and the country benefits from the perception that it is one of the more dynamic economies in the region. This gives the ruling system room to maneuver. The reform narrative allows the leadership to present itself as forward-looking without opening the...

Critical Minerals

Opinion: Kazakhstan’s Critical Minerals Promise Is Running Out of Time

Kazakhstan has long been defined by what lies beneath its soil. Oil, uranium, copper, zinc, lead, chromium, gold, and other minerals have shaped the country’s post-Soviet economy and supplied the budget, export revenues, and industrial base that supported three decades of state-building. That model is now entering a more complex phase. In the first quarter of 2026, Kazakhstan’s industrial output slipped as mining and quarrying fell by 11.4%, with crude oil production down 19.8%, natural gas output down 20%, and other mineral extraction down 15.1%, according to figures reported from the Bureau of National Statistics. The oil decline also reflected specific disruptions. Kazakhstan’s energy minister said oil and gas condensate production fell 20% year-on-year in the first quarter, while production at Tengiz had only recently resumed after an outage linked to a fire at a power unit. Reuters reported that the field’s restart was gradual. Those short-term shocks should not be confused with the whole story. They expose a deeper vulnerability: Kazakhstan has been highly successful at extracting known deposits, but far less successful at replacing them. The World Bank’s mining sector diagnostic put the problem plainly. Kazakhstan is underexplored, greenfield exploration has been almost non-existent for about 30 years, and much of the geological data inherited from the Soviet period is incomplete or outdated. This is not a story of geology alone. It is a story of institutions, incentives, and time. Deposits deplete whether governments plan for it or not. The difference between a mature resource economy and a vulnerable one is whether exploration, processing, regulation, and regional diversification keep pace with extraction. The Arithmetic of Depletion Kazakhstan still has one of the strongest mineral endowments in Eurasia. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has described rare and rare-earth metals as having “essentially become new oil,” and told the government to expand geological and geophysical exploration from 1.5 million square kilometers to at least 2.2 million by 2026, according to Akorda. OECD analysis published in 2026 underlines why the stakes are high. Kazakhstan’s metals mining sector accounted for 12.1% of GDP in 2024. The country is the world’s largest uranium producer, can currently export 21 of the 34 critical raw materials on the European Union’s official list, and has some of the world’s largest reserves of chromium, zinc, and lead. Yet reserve strength on paper does not remove the operational pressure at existing mines. In 2022, Kazakhstan’s prime minister warned that reserve growth for many minerals had not been compensated and that major metal deposits in eastern Kazakhstan, including Orlovskoye, Maleyevskoye, Tishinskoye, and Ridder-Sokolnoye, could be mined out within the next decade, according to the government’s own account of its 2023-2027 geology concept. Gold shows a similar tension between headline potential and mine-level pressure. Industry reporting has linked a fall in Kazakhstan’s 2025 mining output targets partly to changes at Vasilkovskoye, one of the country’s largest gold deposits, where operations are shifting from open-pit to underground mining as easily accessible ore becomes harder to extract. MINEX Forum reported that the transition reduced...

Education

Opinion: Uzbekistan’s Growth Story Has a Skills Problem

Uzbekistan has become one of Central Asia's strongest growth stories. GDP expanded by 6.5% in 2024, and the Asian Development Bank projects growth of 6.7% in 2026 and 6.8% in 2027. Industry, services, and foreign investment are all expanding. The World Bank says real GDP growth averaged around 6% a year between 2017 and 2025. Beneath that momentum, however, a quieter problem is taking shape. Uzbekistan may not yet be training enough workers for the economy it is trying to build. The issue is not a shortage of capital; it is a shortage of market-ready skills. The country has moved from an isolated, heavily state-controlled economy toward a more open and reform-driven model in less than a decade. But if education, vocational training, and private-sector demand do not align faster, Uzbekistan risks turning one of the region's strongest demographic advantages into a labor-market strain. A Dividend That Could Become a Deficit Uzbekistan is a young country in every sense. About 700,000 young people enter the job market each year, while the working-age population is expected to keep expanding for decades. In development economics, this kind of demographic concentration is often described as a dividend: a period when a large share of the population is of working age, productive, and capable of driving growth. The risk is that the dividend does not materialize automatically. It depends on whether young people can move into productive, formal, and better-paid work. If the workforce entering the economy is not equipped with the skills employers need, the same demographic pressure can feed into informality, underemployment, migration, and social strain. The official unemployment rate fell to 4.9% in the third quarter of 2025. That is a meaningful improvement. But around 760,000 people remained registered as job seekers, and the International Labour Organization has estimated informal employment at about 40% of the workforce. Remittances also remain a structural pillar of household income: according to Central Bank data cited by local media, inflows reached $18.9 billion in 2025, up from $14.8 billion in 2024. This is not the picture of a country that has already solved its human-capital challenge. It is the picture of a country racing against time. The Mismatch at the Heart of the Problem The core challenge is not a shortage of graduates. Higher education has expanded dramatically. According to Uzbekistan's National Statistics Committee, coverage among 18- to 23-year-olds reached 47.7% at the start of the 2024/2025 academic year, up from 8.3% in 2017. The number of higher education institutions has also grown rapidly. By conventional access metrics, this is an extraordinary achievement. But enrollment alone is not the measure that matters. Employers need workers who can solve practical problems, operate modern equipment, manage digital systems, and adapt quickly to changing production and service needs. Too many students are still moving through programs shaped by an older economic model: credential-heavy, theoretically oriented, and weakly connected to the needs of a modern labor market in IT, manufacturing, logistics, energy, tourism, and services. The student-financing system has...

Brain Drain

Opinion: Kazakhstan’s Human Capital Problem – How State Scholarships Are Building a Talent Pipeline for the West

Kazakhstan spends millions of dollars every year sending its brightest students to the world's best universities through two flagship programs: the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) and Bolashak. For NIS, the state invests millions with no public record of what becomes of its graduates once they enter foreign educational institutions. For Bolashak, the return figures look reassuring on paper, but only until one asks what happens the moment the obligation expires. For Kazakhstan’s economy, heavily reliant on oil and gas exports, human capital is what can bring the country to its goal of economic diversification through the ideas and skills that no natural resource can replicate. Students from Kazakhstan studying abroad, with access to the world’s best professors and cutting-edge technologies, are exactly the human capital the country cannot afford to lose. However, they are also the ones the government has been paying to send away without a sustainable retention strategy in place. Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools Founded in 2008, the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools network offers an internationally recognized 12-year curriculum, directly compatible with many foreign university admissions systems. It also provides some of its students with grants covering the full cost of attendance. The state funds NIS generously: in 2023 alone, more than $37 million was invested into the network. The results are extraordinary: from 2010 to 2024, 654 students received offers from the top 100 universities in the world, with 32 of them from the Ivy League. However, which country these graduates end up in is a different question, and the available statistics offer no public answer to. One former NIS student, who received a full scholarship to study abroad, says, "I'm extremely grateful for all the resources that the NIS provided me with. However, after my graduation from the university, I will be moving to San Francisco to work as an AI engineer. It would take me at least seven years to make the same salary I'll be earning here in a year." Another says, "It is not only about the higher wages in the U.S. It’s about the opportunities and autonomy one gets. The research lab I've joined since graduation has far more funding and resources for the work I'm actually passionate about." Bolashak Program Unlike NIS, the Bolashak program, established in 1993 and widely regarded as one of the most generous scholarship programs in the world, does require its recipients to return. Graduates must work in Kazakhstan for up to four years or face financial penalties. On paper, this looks like a solution to the human capital problem. In practice, it is only a delay. While the state at least partially recovers its investment, it is developed markets that eventually inherit the talent. "After completing my requirement back home, I was able to get an American company to sponsor my visa," says one Bolashak recipient. "I moved to the U.S. shortly after." "I was offered a transfer to the European branch of my company," says another, one year after fulfilling their obligation. The Solution to the Brain...

Sanctions

Opinion: Bishkek Between Sanctions and Africa: The Quiet Architecture of Proxy Sovereignty

The official visit of Togo’s head of government, Faure Gnassingbé, to Kyrgyzstan on April 28–30 should not be read as an isolated diplomatic event. It is taking place inside an unusually dense cluster of activity: the SCO Council of Defence Ministers, the presence of China’s defence minister, the fifth meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) digital and ICT ministers, and a parallel SCO Forum on Artificial Intelligence. Bishkek, in other words, was not simply hosting an African leader. It was presenting itself — intentionally or not — as a Eurasian platform where security, digital governance, AI, transport, tourism, and external partnerships intersect. This geometry deserves attention. Bishkek as a Digital Interface Over the past several years, Kyrgyzstan has worked to reposition itself — not only as a mountainous transit country, but as a provider of digital state capacity: e-government tools, secure documents, digital identification, fintech infrastructure, and special financial regimes such as the proposed Tamchy special financial and investment territory, which combines Kyrgyz sovereignty with elements of English law and international arbitration. For many African countries, this offer can be attractive. Governments across the continent are looking for administrative modernization, digital sovereignty, and alternatives to legacy Western-controlled infrastructure. For Bishkek, such partnerships offer something equally valuable: visibility, geopolitical relevance, and an opportunity to export state technology beyond Central Asia. Togo is a particularly interesting test case. Lomé is one of West Africa’s important maritime and logistical hubs, with access not only to the Gulf of Guinea but, indirectly, to the Sahel region — Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger — where Russia has expanded its security footprint. If Kyrgyz digital infrastructure were to enter this corridor, it would not be a minor technical export. It would connect a Central Asian jurisdiction to one of Africa’s most strategically sensitive zones. It must be said honestly: this remains a hypothesis. Public information about specific Kyrgyz digital products being offered to Togo remains limited. But the political signal is difficult to ignore: Bishkek is not approaching this visit as a routine bilateral courtesy. The Russia Question There is a more sensitive layer to this picture. Kyrgyzstan is a close partner of Russia. Russia, in turn, is under heavy Western sanctions and is searching for alternative financial, commercial, and logistical routes. This creates a natural suspicion that Kyrgyz digital and financial infrastructure could — directly or indirectly — become useful to Russian-linked actors. This does not mean every Kyrgyz initiative abroad is directed from Moscow. That reading is too simplistic. A more precise framing is this: Kyrgyzstan may be becoming part of a distributed sanctions-era infrastructure in which Russian, Chinese, Central Asian, and Global South interests increasingly overlap. In this sense, Bishkek may not be a “front office” for Russia alone. It may be emerging as a Eurasian adapter — a jurisdiction through which larger actors can interact with sensitive markets under a less toxic, more flexible brand. A7A5 and the Closing Window The crypto-financial dimension makes this issue urgent. A7A5, a ruble-pegged stablecoin issued...

Water Scarcity

Opinion: As Water Runs Short, Uzbekistan Faces New Migration Pressure

In the 21st century, Uzbekistan is no longer just confronting an ecological crisis - it is on the verge of socio-political transformations driven by water. As agricultural lands are being degraded and river flows are decreasing, the country is now facing what experts describe as a “slow-onset disaster”: internal climate migration. The roots of this crisis go back to the tragedy of the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest lake, which has shrunk to roughly 10% of its original area since the 1960s largely due to Soviet-era irrigation projects. The human toll has been enormous: not only is agriculture in decline, but the lives of the people living in the Aral Sea region have been profoundly altered. Each year, storms lift an estimated 15 million to 75 million tons of sand, dust, and salt from the dried Aral seabed, spreading it across Uzbekistan and the wider region. Now, another challenge is looming - the water supply. In 2018, 79,942 internally displaced people were reported in Uzbekistan. The dwindling water supply and the threat to agro-ecosystems are creating a new generation of climate migrants. The number of climate-related displacements is expected to reach 200,000 in the coming years. The Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, Uzbekistan’s hydrological lifelines, are under growing strain from climate change, inefficient irrigation, and transboundary water-distribution pressures. Experts warn that the country's water deficit could reach 7 billion cubic meters by 2030, and 15 billion cubic meters by 2050. The World Bank predicts that Uzbekistan's economy could shrink by 10% by 2050 if no meaningful action is taken to adapt to climate change. Now, another new factor threatens to accelerate this trend. The Taliban government in Afghanistan is building the Qosh Tepa Canal, a 285-kilometer irrigation project that will divert water from the Amu Darya River. According to Rieks Bosch, an international expert on natural resources and economics, the canal will divert 20% of the Amu Darya's water, which will exacerbate water shortages in some parts of Uzbekistan and negatively affect agriculture. "In any case, Uzbekistan will definitely suffer," he said. Analyses show that up to 250,000 people could lose their jobs in agriculture as a result of water shortages. The most vulnerable regions - Bukhara, Khorezm, Karakalpakstan, Surkhandarya, and Kashkadarya - are located mainly in rural areas and depend on agriculture and livestock. With almost half of Uzbekistan’s population living outside urban centers, the loss of agricultural viability is not just an economic problem; it is the disruption of a way of life. “Water scarcity, air pollution, biodiversity loss, and a sharp decline in agricultural productivity are constantly increasing,” President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said at COP 28, acknowledging that these problems are “reaching their “critical peak.” Yet policy responses are still lagging behind the pace of environmental change. Uzbekistan’s climate migration problem cannot be solved by managing water resources alone. This requires a new strategic framework – a “Water-Migration-Security” strategy that combines regional cooperation, innovative water-saving technologies in agriculture, and proactive adaptation measures for the communities most at...