Kazakhstan - KZ - KAZ - KAZ - Central Asia

Ethnic Kazakhs derive from a mix of Turkic nomadic tribes that migrated to the region in the 15th century. The Russian Empire conquered the Kazakh steppe in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Kazakhstan became a Soviet Republic in 1925. Forced agricultural collectivization led to repression and starvation, resulting in more than a million deaths in the early 1930s. During the 1950s and 1960s, the agricultural "Virgin Lands" program generated an influx of settlers -- mostly ethnic Russians, but also other nationalities -- and by the time of Kazakhstan’s independence in 1991, ethnic Kazakhs were a minority. However, non-Muslim ethnic minorities departed Kazakhstan in large numbers from the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s, and a national program has repatriated about a million ethnic Kazakhs (from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, and the Xinjiang region of China) to Kazakhstan. As a result of this shift, the ethnic Kazakh share of the population now exceeds two-thirds.

Kazakhstan's economy is the largest in Central Asia, mainly due to the country's vast natural resources. Current issues include diversifying the economy, attracting foreign direct investment, enhancing Kazakhstan's economic competitiveness, and strengthening economic relations with neighboring states and foreign powers.

part of the "Northern Route," land drug trafficking route from Afghanistan to Russia and Europe; domestic manufacturing of synthetics increasing and domestic drug use trends to synthetic drugs outpacing heroin and cannabis;

Kazakhstan has one of the most developed telecommunications sectors in the region; this is especially true of the mobile segment, where the country has the second fastest average mobile data rates in Central Asia after Azerbaijan; the competing Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have built extensive Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks: about 76% of mobile subscribers were on LTE as of March 2024, while the company’s LTE network provided 89% geographic coverage; this widespread network coverage, as well as the development of 5G networks, has been encouraged by the government with the second stage of its Digital Kazakhstan program, by which most settlements across the country will be furnished with mobile internet connectivity; the remaining rural villages will be covered by satellite services; at the turn of the century, Kazakhstan had a relatively high fixed-line tele density thanks to efforts to invest in the fixed-line infrastructure and in next-generation networks; the gobal demand for traditional voice services are decreasing as customers are increasingly attracted to the flexibility of the mobile platform for voice as well as data services