[yt_dropcap type=”square” font=”” size=”14″ color=”#000″ background=”#fff” ] W [/yt_dropcap]hat the future held the evening of Dec. 26, 1991 was far from certain. At 7:32 pm local time the flag of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics was lowered for the last time in front of the Kremlin. And with that, the sprawling empire of the Soviet Union ended and 15 former republics were on their own.
More than 125 million people, thousands of businesses, tens of thousands of workers and countless public services that had counted on the centralised government in Moscow for their very survival, were forced to start again, to build not only governments and economic systems but cultures and national identities. It was a daunting prospect fraught with challenge and uncertainty.
One of those former 15 republics set adrift, however, has met those challenges and exceeded expectations with an economy-first domestic policy that has embraced its historic ethnic and religious diversity to create a stable, growing economy and proud, dynamic citizenry.
Kazakhstan, a country with the land size of Western Europe but only 17 million people, has seized the opportunity to rebuild and, in just a short quarter-century, is on its way to being counted among the world’s most developed nations.
Harnessing its abundant oil and gas resources, the country has attracted more than $226 billion in foreign direct investments over the last decade alone and despite a slowdown during the recent global economic crisis, has enjoyed consistent GDP growth. Despite being home to more than 130 ethnicities and more than a dozen religions, Kazakhstan has enjoyed extraordinary peace and stability among its population.
Kazakhstan has also become a world leader in nuclear non-proliferation, having renounced the world’s fourth largest nuclear arsenal, and worked hard as a positive international force for peace and diplomatic solutions to international conflicts.
Kazakhstan was recently elected to a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the first Central Asian nation to do so, and has hosted the peace talks involving all sides of the conflict in Syria this year. These successes, however, have not come by chance, but have been the results of long-term, strategic planning initiated by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
In 1997, the country adopted its Kazakhstan 2030 development programme, focusing on key sectors of stability and growth. And in 2012, just 20 years after achieving independence, the Kazakh President announced that the goals of the 2030 plan had been achieved 18 years ahead of schedule and that the country was laying out an even a more ambitious plan. The country announced its Kazakhstan 2050 programme designed to place Kazakhstan within the world’s 30 most-developed nations by mid-century.
“We adopted the Kazakhstan Strategy 2050 so that the people of Kazakhstan would firmly hold the helm of the future of the country in their hands,” Nazarbayev said in January 2014.
The strategy hopes to achieve its ambitious goal by focusing on seven priorities: economic pragmatism, comprehensive support for entrepreneurship, an improved social policy, a modern education system to produce a skilled workforce, a consistent foreign policy focus on domestic, regional and international security, a more developed democracy and a promotion of Kazakh patriotism.
While these priorities provide a roadmap, the country and the President realise that policy goals are not enough. Those policy positions must be based on broader, unifying principles.
“Strategic planning is a ‘number one’ rule in the 21st century, because no wind will be favourable unless a country does not know its route and destination harbour. Strategy Kazakhstan 2050, as a guiding beacon, allows us to solve our people’s everyday issues, while also keeping our priority aims in mind. This means that we should improve the life of our nation not in 30 or 50 years’ time, but do so every year,” said Nazarbayev.
Among the principles Nazarbayev has announced are a focus on evolutionary rather than revolutionary change. It is a realisation that change occurs over time and is achieved when all actions steer toward a clear objective.
The country also hopes to more deeply integrate into the regional and global economy, and, most importantly, continually strive to improve the lives of everyday Kazakhs.
The value of the Kazakhstan 2050 plan and its ambitious goal to be among the 30 most developed nations by mid-century is that it gives not only the Kazakh people but all members of the Kazakh government a clear objective. And they have responded.
The government has approved the “Plan of the Nation: 100 Concrete Steps to Implement Five Constitutional Reforms” to achieve specific institutional reforms. Among these are a consistent rule of law and more accountable government.
The country has also unveiled modernisation efforts across industries and sectors, including agriculture, transport, logistics, real estate, education, healthcare and social protection of the population, among others.
And in a significant step in its development as a democracy and as a developed nation, the President and Parliament have this year approved legislation decentralising presidential power and more proportionally distributing authority back to the legislature under a set of constitutional reforms.
“We are witnessing the beginning of a new, largely unclear, historical cycle. And it is impossible to occupy a place in an advanced group, preserving the old model of consciousness and thinking. Therefore, it is important to concentrate, go through changes, adapt to changing conditions and take the best of what the new era offers,” Nazarbayev wrote in a recent address to the nation.
It is that embrace and harnessing of the country’s unique history and population coupled with clear long-term objectives, such as those in Kazakhstan Strategy 2050, that will likely serve Kazakhstan as well over the next quarter-century as they have since the flag was lowered on the Soviet Union and a new nation was born just more than 25 years ago.
