Development of e-commerce in Kazakhstan

Press release

“Development of e-commerce in Kazakhstan”

A round table “Development of e-commerce in Kazakhstan” will be held on the sidelines of the International Forum “Digital Bridge 2023” under the auspices of the National Commission on Women’s Affairs and Family and Demographic Policy under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, where initiatives to involve women in the digital economy will be discussed.

Expanding access to digital technologies for women will expand their economic opportunities and improve their position in the labor market. At the same time, women’s jobs are more at risk of automation – 70%. According to international experts, if another 600 million women and girls could access the digital economy around the world, this could lead to an increase in global GDP by 18 billion US dollars.

Women around the world are much more likely than men to face greater barriers in accessing and using technology — in addition to a lack of skills, they are also subject to greater family restrictions due to existing social norms and gender expectations — and thus find themselves excluded from the digital economy. In order to create conditions for increasing women’s incomes, the National Commission on Women, Family and Demographic Policy under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan initiated the development of an action plan to expand women’s economic opportunities/to involve women in productive employment, and, together with Astana Hub, launched the IT-Aiel program to improve the digital competencies of unemployed women and women on maternity leave. As part of the IT-Aiel program, women were trained in none-code programming and opportunities to sell their services on Kazakhstani and foreign freelance platforms. In total, 2,675 applications for participation in the IT-Aiel program were submitted by women from all over Kazakhstan, including more than 900 unemployed women, more than 400 women on maternity leave, more than 500 students, and more than 700 self-employed women. The average age of the participants is 32 years.

E-commerce opens up great opportunities for women. According to research conducted by Euromonitor International and KPMG, the e-commerce market size in 2022 was 1.3 trillion tenge. But despite the growing e-commerce market, female artisans and SME representatives do not have access to large electronic trading platforms. Also, the market of small niche marketplaces in Kazakhstan is poorly developed and does not have access to current government support measures.

To solve these problems, an initiative working group was created on the basis of the Non-profit organization “TechnoWomen”, which will present on the sidelines of Digital Bridge 2023 “the program for involving SMEs in e-commerce “Qazaq e-com”. This program includes a set of measures to increase the transparency of product certification, simplify tax administration, and improve the digital competencies of micro and small entrepreneurs.

Involving women in e-commerce is one of the priorities of the new development strategy of Kazpost JSC, which acts as a social partner of the state to promote digital services and access to the digital economy for the rural population.

Currently, Kazpost JSC strives to become an integrated financial and logistics operator of e-commerce, providing fulfillment services (there are already 3 fulfillment centers in Astana, Almaty and Aktobe, where entrepreneurs can receive comprehensive services, including acceptance, processing, storage, tracking and delivery of goods to the end consumer), end-to-end transportation, Internet acquiring, creating opportunities for our citizens, women entrepreneurs to use the advantages that the digital economy offers us. Kazpost JSC is also ready to provide preferential rates for artisans who will sell their products through marketplaces.

Stimulating the creation and development of small and medium-sized Kazakhstani marketplaces, expanding the forms of non-cash payments in e-commerce, switching to electronic checks, expanding the network of fulfillment centers and stimulating the development of logistics by creating infrastructure for unified logistics centers of the Central Asian countries will significantly increase the volume of investments in this market.

In order to promote women’s entrepreneurship, with the support of the National Commission, the TechnoWomen Association organized a presentation of 20 women’s IT projects before all akimats, regional and international business communities. For wider involvement of women in technological entrepreneurship, it is proposed to develop and implement the Acceleration Program to support women’s technological projects “TechnoWomen Startup”. The goal of this program will be to increase the number of women entrepreneurs who implement advanced technologies, digital transformation of industries, etc. To implement this program, it is advisable to attract the resources of international and Kazakhstani development institutions.

Currently, the National Commission is actively working to promote Kazakhstan as an IT country in the international community, as well as to create conditions for scaling up digital projects of Kazakhstani women. Thus, in March 2023, Kazakhstan’s advanced experience in developing digitalization and new technologies with the participation of women was presented in March of this year at the 67th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, at the international forums “Digital Almaty-2023” and “TechnoWomen Central Asia: Ozіңe sen!” in Almaty.

Currently, TechnoWomen has a partner network in the countries of Central Asia, which unites progressive women from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. With the support of the National Commission, partner networks of women’s communities working in technology industries in countries around the world are being created, which, with the help of the “soft power” effect, helps promote Kazakhstani technology projects for export.

Presentations of projects initiated by the National Commission on creating a comfortable digital environment in the field of education, healthcare, sex education, suicide prevention, and development of social entrepreneurship skills on the sidelines of these forums made it possible to demonstrate the successes of Kazakhstani women in the IT sphere.

Members of the National Commission took an active part in holding a meeting of the Dialogue of Women of Central Asian Countries, presented successful innovative projects on the role of women in the development of new technologies, and took part in the discussion of digital projects aimed at developing women’s startups, artificial intelligence, and digitalization in rural areas.

The TechnoWomen Central Asia movement today is essentially a large public initiative that unites progressive women of Central Asia and creates conditions for the development of technology business and digital transformation of the economy of the entire region.

Understanding the importance of AI influence on the transformation of the labor market and entrepreneurship, TECHNOWOMEN proposes to create an open Artificial Intelligence laboratory based at Kazakhstani universities, which will allow training students and SMEs to use AI to increase productivity in all sectors of the economy and improve business competitiveness.

The implementation of these initiatives requires fruitful cooperation between the state, NGOs and businesses. There is a lot of work ahead on the digital transformation of the economy and society, so women must undergo retraining, improve their digital competencies and actively join the digital economy.

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