Kazakhstan boasts to have an AI diplomacy and a digital-government track record. What it is missing is a platform that turns both into water reaching the people who need it. During President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s visit to Shanghai this July, he addressed the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, describing AI as an industry now building out a “comprehensive infrastructure” that will shape the future of the global economy, trade and international connectivity.
He cited the United Nations statistics showing that global investment in AI infrastructure is growing by an average of 47% a year, with the global AI market on track to approach $5 trillion by 2033. His main argument was about fairness: AI should become a driver of more equitable and inclusive development, and every country needs a chance to build its own human capital, digital infrastructure and institutions around it, not just the few states currently leading the field.
Kazakhstan did not just make the argument in Shanghai — it proposed and acted on it, co-founding the new World AI Cooperation Organization alongside 28 other states within months of the idea being proposed, with Tokayev offering the capital of Kazakhstan as host of its first meeting.
The obvious next step is what Kazakhstan actually builds with that vision once the delegation flies home. A very powerful candidate sitting in the country’s own fields is water. A crisis moving faster than the diplomacy meant to fix it Kazakhstan is among the world’s 30 most water-stressed countries and has lost over 21% of its per capita water availability since the start of the 2000s.
More than 45% of its water actually originates outside its borders. The Caspian Sea is now at its lowest level in over 400 years and shrinks at a fast accelerating rate. None of this is moving on a diplomatic timetable. Yet the country’s main global response is a proposed International Water Organization (IWO) championed by Tokayev under UN auspices since 2025, but discussions are still focused on how the organization should eventually take shape.
A parallel regional process, Tajikistan’s Dushanbe Water Framework, remains an important initiative, yet it is not expected to be adopted until the 2028 UN Water Conference. Both processes matter, and neither is wrong to exist — a UN-backed framework can build an institution that carries international legitimacy, but that takes time and lasting credibility.
The problem is that water insecurity is moving much faster than the diplomacy designed to address it. With every year that passes, the gap between the crisis and the response grows a little wider. Kazakhstan has already showcased that it can act quickly when it sees a strategic opportunity.
Its recent leadership on AI cooperation in Shanghai showed its capabilities of bringing countries together and building new institutions. Water diplomacy now requires the same sense of urgency. The idea: an AI platform that matches specific needs to specific help The proposal currently taking shape is called AqylSu — meaning “smart water” in Kazakh.
The idea was inspired by Kazakhstan’s own eGov.kz system, the main aim of which is to bring the same efficiency to international water cooperation. Instead of relying on long, case-by-case negotiations, AqylSu would provide a single digital platform where countries could submit their requests, find suitable partners, and track progress.
While Kazakhstan has gained international recognition worldwide for its digital governance, no similar system currently exists for cooperation on water between countries. The idea is simple. A country that faces a specific water-related problem, such as a shortage of water filtration equipment, would submit a structured request through the platform.