Astana, Kazakhstan
USAID: Relations with Kazakhstan will Continue to Grow Stronger
Ms. Toptayeva: Ms. Deputy Administrator, thanks so much for joining us today, and welcome to Kazakhstan. USAID has been a strategic partner of the Kazakh government since 1992, if I’m not mistaken, and in 30 years we have developed our relationship by working on various projects. I wish we could cover every project because I know each of them is significant, but unfortunately time is limited, so I would like to start our conversation by focusing on your visit.
So your trip marks the first USAID leadership visit in Central Asia for over two decades, so what is the purpose, why now?
Deputy Administrator Coleman: Thank you so much. It really is a pleasure to be here. It’s my first trip to Kazakhstan. I had the honor of speaking in December 2021 at the U.S.-Kazakhstan celebration of our 30th anniversary of our relations in Washington. I met some of your leaders then, and I made a promise that I would come to Kazakhstan. We do have a very long relationship, it goes back to the earliest days of the birth of Kazakhstan and before me it has been a long time, as you said, I think it is 22 years exactly since Administrator Natsios was last here. It was important for me to come to underscore the importance of the relationship, the breadth of activities we’ve done together, the progress that we have accomplished in partnership, and for me to be able to see this beautiful country, this amazing relatively new capital city, and to meet Kazakh people and hear directly from the people here about their hopes and aspirations so that we can make sure that we are focusing on the most important priorities for you.
Ms. Toptayeva: Well as you said Kazakhstan and USAID have developed a long standing relationship, so what have we achieved already and where are we now?
Deputy Administrator Coleman: I think we have achieved much together over the years, we’ve done a lot of work in a variety of ways, as you said it’s too many things to go through everything but certainly in the health field we’ve made a lot of progress. There are hundreds of thousands of Kazakh people who have been able to take antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV plus other diseases that we’ve helped manage. We’ve done a lot of work together on building up the economy, strengthening economic growth, on environmental work, on alternative energy. So, there are many different ways that we have worked together, and of course on helping to strengthen democracy and build up democratic institutions, tackle corruption, address human rights, there are a whole range of issues that we’ve worked with you in partnership on.
Ms. Toptayeva: About democracy and human rights, I’m going to ask a little bit later. You are expected to meet some of the members of the Kazakh government including the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs so what do you hope comes out of this meeting?
Deputy Administrator Coleman: Again, I want to underscore the importance of the bilateral relationship. This is a partnership that we care deeply about. Kazakhstan is an important country, it’s an important country in its own right, it’s an important country in Central Asia, and as you noted, we have a long partnership, and I am looking forward to deepening that partnership and hearing directly from them about their priorities and the ways that we can continue to work on helping to realize the reform agenda that President Tokayev has announced and really help on the full implementation of that agenda.
Ms. Toptayeva: I understand that USAID’s Central Asian Mission provides not only bilateral but also regional support, why is that and can you please elaborate on the importance of regional connectivity?
Deputy Administrator Coleman: Yes, thank you for that question. We do have our regional mission here in Kazakhstan and the work that we do from that regional mission is very focused on improving and deepening regional integration. Integration of energy markets, regional approaches to alternative energy and renewable energy and of course regional approaches to deepen intraregional trade. For 11 years we’ve had the Central Asian Trade Forum, and over that time period intraregional trade has doubled from $3bn to $6bn, and these are the types of things that will help build stronger, more resilient economies. So we think a regional approach is very important.
Ms. Toptayeva: Could you please tell us again how USAID works on improving the regional economic growth?
Deputy Administrator Coleman: So we work on helping align markets, break down barriers to trade, cross border trade so easing customs and facilitating trade across the different economies here. So, it is pretty technical work that we do but it is, as I said, aligning the customs and borders to ease and facilitate trade flows across the region.
Ms. Toptayeva: I think that’s an amazing thing because it’s really important to try and improve this kind of relationship within the region. So can you talk about USAID's initiative for the region, because as you know the world is facing enormous food insecurity due to first the COVID crisis, global warming and of course due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict now so what are the initiatives?
Deputy Administrator Coleman: Well, you are right that we saw food prices begin to rise during the supply chain disruptions that came from the COVID-19 pandemic but these trends were really exacerbated by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. You know one big food exporter, Russia, invading another big food exporter, Ukraine, has had ripple effects across the whole global world of food production. Our Congress has very generously passed a number of supplemental budgets to address the resulting food insecurity. For Central Asia, we’ve had an additional $16.5m and that’s going to really help the most vulnerable people in the most vulnerable countries in Central Asia meet their food insecurity needs.
Ms. Toptayeva: USAID has initiatives in terms of democracy, human rights, and governance such as supporting civil society activities and developing local media outlets as well as assisting the Supreme Court in improving administrative efficiency, so could you please elaborate on this work, what are the successes, what are the challenges?
Deputy Administrator Coleman: Well, the successes I actually saw first hand today – I met some young civil society leaders – Kazakh leaders here - who are working across a whole range of different civil society sectors to promote human rights and to promote a more inclusive and participatory government for citizens. So it was very heartening to see these really inspired, really dedicated young people who are tackling different issues and for me that’s a sign of the strength and health of civil society. I think when we look at what we’ve done together you know we’ve really tried to support as I said Kazakhstan’s reform agenda, working with different institutions, you mentioned judicial reform, also media providing training to journalists and helping independent media understand the role of the independent media and strengthen capacity to deliver on that and you know doing civic education over the years, but we really look forward to continuing to work on partnering with you on President Tokayev’s reform agenda and seeing the full implementation of that agenda going forward.
Ms. Toptayeva: And you are experiencing Central Asia for the first time so what are you most looking forward to during this visit?
Deputy Administrator Coleman: I actually have visited before, I’ve been to Uzbekistan, but never to Kazakhstan, and I am going to be able to visit Kyrgyzstan and also Tajikistan while on this trip. I’m really looking forward to first and foremost to meeting the wonderful people of the region, hearing more about the opportunities and ways that we can work together to strengthen our partnership, both bilateral relationships with the countries I’m visiting but also the interregional relationships too. And ofcourse seeing the beautiful sights of these countries and meeting the people.
Ms. Toptayeva: What do you most wish Kazkahs and Central Asians knew about USAID’s work in the region?
Deputy Administrator Coleman: Well, I hope that people can recognise, as you noted, the long partnership that we’ve had, the good work that we’ve done together already and the fruits of that I think we see in many different ways, as Kazakhstan becomes now an upper-middle income country and some of the gains that it has had over the years started years ago with investments that we’ve made together in the health sector, in democracy and governance, in media, in energy, in trade in all of these things and we see it just progress in so many different ways and I think our sign of a really good outcome is when we stop doing things because they’re no longer needed and I look at a country like Kazakhstan that is making such great progress economically, the types of things that we will do I think will become more and more narrow because Kazakhstan can so stand on its own and for us that is a sign of a great success.
Ms. Toptayeva: Thank you, and what message would you like to send to the people of Kazakhstan?
Deputy Administrator Coleman: That the United States supports Kazakhstan and your sovereignty, your independence, your security and having a strong and vibrant economy.