If a country fails to invest in its own science, it implies that it will end up sustaining others by selling its own resources, extracted with the help of foreign scientists.
Renowned blogger Ilyas Baktygaliyev, on his Telegram channel, presents disheartening figures:
«Over the past year, expenditures on scientific research in our country increased by 11.2% compared to 2021, reaching 121.6 billion tenge. This might sound good unless you know that this amounts to no more than 0.13% of the GDP.
In the IMD 2023 ranking of expenditures on R&D, Kazakhstan holds the 57th position out of 60 countries.
Moreover, expenditures on R&D in our country have not exceeded 0.13% of GDP since 2017. Kazakhstan has consistently been among the bottom ten countries for years in terms of per capita spending on the scientific sector.
For comparison, here are the R&D expenditure percentages of some countries worldwide:
- USA: 2.7%
- China: 2.5%
- Russia: 1%
- South Korea: 4.8%
- Turkey: 0.88%
It becomes clear why South Korea, consistently among the top three in per capita R&D spending, is now one of the largest exporters of cutting-edge weaponry. Kazakhstan’s indicators are significantly worse than the global average, and on such financially barren ground, no science can thrive.»
