10 Jun

Kazakhstan?

Kazakhstan ready to contribute to peaceful resolution of Karabakh conflict
BBC Monitoring International Reports – Saturday, June 9, 2012
Text of report by Russian internet news agency Regnum, specializing in regional reporting

The Speaker of the parliament of Azerbaijan , Oqtay Asadov, met a delegation headed by the Speaker of the Senate of the Kazakh parliament, Kayrat Mami, on 8 June.

The press service of the parliament of Azerbaijan reports that during the meeting, Asadov said that the peoples of both countries, united by ancient roots, common cultural and spiritual values, had high hopes for the development of relations.

” Azerbaijan , a rapidly growing country in the South Caucasus today, intends to expand economic, cultural and humanitarian cooperation with Kazakhstan,” he said.

Asadov also said that the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, which was the most painful problem of Azerbaijan , was a great obstacle to the full development of the region.

“We are in favour of a fair solution to the problem within the framework of international law. We believe that with the support of the international community, including Kazakhstan, the issue will soon find its just solution,” he said.

Kayrat Mami emphasized that Azerbaijan was Kazakhstan’s most important partner in the Caspian region. He said Kazakhstan was ready to give all possible assistance for the speedy and peaceful resolution of the Nagornyy-Karabakh conflict.
Original Language: Russian
Section: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan
Index Terms: KAZAKH ; AZERI ; KAZAKHSTAN AZERBAIJAN ARMENIA ; RUSSIA ; DOMESTIC POLITICAL ; INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL
Original Source: Regnum news agency, Moscow
Record Number: 13F4CC15EF7B74E0
Source: Regnum news agency, Moscow, in Russian 0001 gmt 9 Jun 12/BBC Monitoring

17 Dec

Kazakhstan Internet

With all of the activity in Kazakhstan right now, I wanted to pull some findings from a conference paper/ article in submission about Central Asian Internet. (I can’t post the entire paper while it is still in submission – sorry!) If you have questions or are interested in more detailed analysis, contact me and I’d be happy to do what I can.

Here’s Kazakh Internet penetration according to the ITU (which frequent readers know I’m not a fan of because it uses the telecom companies’ information to determine adoption):

Internet Adopters (% of population that have ever used) (ITU Development Index, 2011)

2004

2.65%

2005

2.96%

2006

3.27%

2007

4.02%

2008

11.00%

2009

18.20%

2010

34.00%

And here’s the data from the paper, national, from spring 2011:

Aware of Internet

80%

Of total, Adopted Internet

50%

Of total, Use Internet

Never

66%

Less than monthly

2%

Monthly

3%

Weekly

10%

Daily

19%

In all of my work I emphasize the importance of ‘frequent use’ as a more salient category of Internet use than ‘ever’ used.

FINDINGS:

In our paper, we model antecedents to Internet awareness, adoption (ever used), and frequent use.

In Kazakhstan, the strongest determinants (in order from strongest) of AWARENESS that the Internet exists were: age, urbanness, education, and economic wellbeing (although economic wellbeing wasn’t strong – statistically significant, but not as strong as the others). (This model explained 13% of the variance in awareness.)

In plain English this means that younger people, more urban people, those with more education, and those with more wealth are more likely to be in the 80% that know what the Internet is.

The strongest determinants (in order from strongest) of ADOPTION (ever having used) were age, economic wellbeing, urbanness, and education. (And this model was set up to control for the effect of these variables on awareness first…) (This model explained 33% of the variance in Internet adoption.)

In plain English this means that younger people, wealthier people, more urban people, and those with more education are more likely to be in the 50% that have ever used the Internet.

The strongest determinants (in order from strongest) of FREQUENT USE were age, urbannesses, and education. Economic wellbeing wasn’t a significant factor, but I’d imagine that the economic barrier exists more at the ‘ever used’ stage and once you’ve gotten over that, frequent use isn’t as much of a cost issue. (This model explained (a whopping!) 49% of the variance in use. (This is really high.))

In plain English this means that younger people, more urban people, and those with more education are more likely to be in the 29% that use the Internet frequently (at least weekly).

So what are Kazakhs doing online?

Of those that are online at least weekly,  85% do email, 77% read news (as a side note, this is quite high compared to what I’ve found in my work in the rest of Central Asia and the Caucasus), 73% are on social networking sites (this is normal compared to the Caucasus) (47% on Odnoklassniki, 43% on vKontake, 14% on Facebook, 7% on Twitter), ~40% interact with blogs (this is very high compared to the rest of Central Asia and the Caucasus), and 23% watch YouTube.

Access points vary.  2/3rd get online via the own PC, most at home (60% of frequent users). Public places are less common that home — 44% at work, 33% at school, 33% at a cafe on a public computer, 35% at a cafe with their own laptop. Mobile Internet is used by 55% of frequent users.

For what it is worth, the Kazakhstan Internet landscape is very different from the rest of Central Asia and the Caucasus — demographically and in the activities engaged in.

08 Jul

Central Asian Women

While CRRC is known for its Caucasus Barometer, in Winter 2011, a Central Asian survey was conducted to look at access to justice in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. (Here are the data files and methodological notes.)

These analyses are only on the issues related to women in Central Asia. There is a lot more in this dataset.