Cisco has announced a number of initiatives in Kazakhstan which it says will ‘help accelerate the country’s digital transformation over the next three years’. The US vendor has signed an agreement with state ICT holding company Zerde, under which Cisco will support the government’s ‘Digital Kazakhstan’ programme, which aims to strengthen the national digital infrastructure and drive economic growth and competitiveness. The three areas of collaboration are: smart city and e-government services in Astana; deploying a convergent network to support the country’s mining industry; and improving skills for the digital economy through the establishing of a ‘Networking Academy’, which will work with schools and universities across the country to enrol 10,000 students on IT-related courses by 2020.
