From population boom to AI diplomacy: Central Asia's next chapter

So let's jump to demographics then.

[upbeat music] As, uh, our listeners may know, Caps Unlock every year is organizing a Central Asia think tank forum in Astana together with, uh, Pepper Lab, which is another think tank doing, uh, social research in the region.

The topic of the last year was actually about demography, and I remember how hard was that to find the speakers and researchers who focus specifically on the topic of demography, not only Kazakhstan, but also in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

So I think this is the question that is very much absent from public and the policy discourse.

I think, uh, Peter, if you could give us some overview and, uh, some, some insights that you got that they can help us to move the discussion forward.

Yes.

So, so the jumping off point I want to start with is, uh, the data produced a few days ago by the National Statistics Committee in Kyrgyzstan, which has just reported its latest population figure.

This is a regular kind of, uh, news peg in Central Asia.

Statistics committees routinely updates, uh, information on how many people live in the country, and the latest figure from Kyrgyzstan is that the country has a population of seven point four million people, and that is a one point seven percent year-on-year increase.

Now, I don't want to drown listeners in figures.

It's very difficult for me at least to process in audio form figures.

So I want to try and make a little bit of sense of that and try to explain why I think that that is so important.

And in doing that, I just wanted to drill down a little bit on one particular angle, which was the fact that the capital city, Bishkek, the population there grew by two point eight percent.

So if you see one point seven percent growth overall, but two point eight percent in the capital, that I think immediately tells its own story.

But, um, let me ask you, people usually come to the city in the two ways.

They either migrate or they are born within the city.

So what's the situation there? Do people in Bishkek just started to make more children or people come to the capital from rural areas, from abroad? What's, what's the situation?

That's exactly the question, I think, and, and evidently what's happening.

I mean, this, this is data which is partly borne out in the latest National Statistics Office information, but also in, in scholarly studies.

There are two things that we're seeing.

So one of them is that cities, Bishkek in particular, are growing more populous in Kyrgyzstan, and that suggests that people are migrating there from the, from rural areas.

So for example, we know that at the moment, uh, forty-two point three percent of Kyrgyz people live in cities.

One year ago, it was forty-one point seven percent.

Again, a little tick upwards, but when you plot the graph over a number of years, you're seeing it go up and up and up.

And actually, if you project that forward, potentially in the next 10, 15 years, you, possibly you're going to see up to half of Kyrgyzstan living in, in cities, which actually that figure is relatively low by, for instance, you know, US standards.