Author: Gulshara Kubanychbek

Harnessing Kyrgyzstan’s Renewable Energy Resources: Opportunities and Challenges Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked country in Central Asia, is blessed with abundant renewable energy resources, including hydro, solar, and wind power. With its mountainous terrain and numerous rivers, the country has a significant potential for generating clean and sustainable energy. However, despite its vast potential, Kyrgyzstan has yet to fully capitalize on these resources. This article explores the opportunities and challenges associated with harnessing renewable energy in Kyrgyzstan and the steps the country can take to overcome these obstacles. Kyrgyzstan’s primary source of renewable energy is hydropower, which accounts for approximately 90% of…

Business circles in the Netherlands are preparing to publish a book on the investment opportunities of the Silk Road countries, including Kyrgyzstan, the press service of the National Investment Agency of the Kyrgyz Republic said, Azernews reports, citing Kabar. Deputy Director of the National Agency Jalyn Jeenaliev last week met with the Honorary Consul of the Kyrgyz Republic in the Kingdom of the Netherlands Jarkyn Koshoeva and the head of Dutch companies Birman. During the meeting, issues of cooperation between countries in various sectors of the economy, as well as the possibility of assisting in the publication of a book,…

A project to modernise the 7.6MW Lebedinovskaya hydropower plant – the largest of its kind in the Kyrgyz Republic – is to receive €13.8 million in funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The funding package comprising an EBRD sovereign loan of €8.8 million and an investment grant of €5 million will go to Chakan GES, the state-owned hydropower operator of nine small hydro power plants, to help finance the rehabilitation and modernisation of Lebedinovskaya. Commissioned in 1943-48, the hydropower project’s equipment is old, inefficient and urgently in need of replacement. The proposed improvements in productivity will…

Lines of mostly men ranging in age from their twenties to their forties filed into the main auditorium at a school in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, anxiously clutching their passports and documents. The group of a hundred or so were among the 6,800 applicants invited earlier this year to attend interviews as part of the selection process for jobs as seasonal farm laborers in the United Kingdom. With ever more migrants returning home to Kyrgyzstan to escape potential military recruitment and economic uncertainty in Russia, applying to work as a seasonal farm laborer in the UK is becoming a popular alternative. …

As Moscow’s brutal war in Ukraine drags on, ordinary Russians continue to leave their homeland to escape worsening economic conditions and evade military service. With demand high among Russians for foreign visas and passports, a growing number of private Russian-based companies are offering services to obtain Kyrgyz citizenship for their Russian clients.The companies, which describe themselves as law firms, have promoted Kyrgyzstan as a friendly, Russian-speaking country. They advertise that Kyrgyz citizenship can open the door to travel, study, and residency in Western countries.Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished former Soviet nation, has maintained good relations with Moscow despite the war in Ukraine.The…

On the afternoon of May 19, 2023, Premier Li Qiang of the State Council met at the Great Hall of the People with President Sadyr Zhaparov of Kyrgyzstan who is in China for the China-Central Asia Summit and a state visit. Li Qiang recalled that recently President Xi Jinping and President Zhaparov had jointly announced the building of a China-Kyrgyzstan community with a shared future of good-neighborliness and shared prosperity, achieving a new strategic upgrade of China-Kyrgyzstan relations. China is ready to work with Kyrgyzstan to fully implement the important common understandings reached between the two heads of state, and…

Both of the small impoverished landlocked nations have accused each other of restarting fighting in a disputed area, despite a ceasefire deal. In a statement, the Kyrgyz border service said its forces were continuing to repel Tajik attacks. “From the Tajik side, shelling of the positions of the Kyrgyz side continues, and in some areas intense battles are going on,” it said. The Kyrgyz health ministry later said 24 citizens had been killed and 87 wounded, Russia’s Interfax news agency said. It did not say how many of the victims were from the military. Kamchybek Tashiev, the head of the…

The March 8 protest highlighted several cases that have stirred public outrage over gender-based violence in the country in recent years. Weak law enforcement means domestic abuse and other violence against women and girls remains normalized. In April 2022, A.J., a 13-year-old girl, died by suicide in Bishkek, five months after district police investigators released the man who had kidnapped and held her for three days, sexually abusing her, before police found her. The sham investigation into his abuse was closed on the basis that a medical expert concluded “the girl at her age looked like she was 17-18 years old.” A.J.’s family…

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev traveled to the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, to mark an occasion that both leaders have described as “historic.” Persistent uncertainties about the exact contours of the roughly 1,400-kilometer-long border are a legacy of the Soviet era. Even as frontiers were chopped and changed, the question of which republic owned what land were for all practical purposes deemed a formality since the Kyrgyz SSR and the Uzbek SSR were both part of the Soviet Union. But bilateral relations since 1991 have persistently been tainted by disagreements on this question. At times, local communities have come into conflict over…

Like thousands of other Kyrgyz citizens, Abdyjapar considers himself an internal migrant. He moved to the capital mainly for economic reasons, hoping for a better life. Bishkek and Osh are popular destinations for internal migration and internal migrants make up a reported 35% of Bishkek’s population. Most of them live in informal settlements around Bishkek, which means their numbers may even be higher than officially reported. As Abdyjapar explains, he struggles to access health and social services due to a registration system known as propiska, which requires migrants to register to receive public services such as health care, water, education,…