World’s first Smart Sustainable City acceleration hub to open in Astana (translation of original article published in Forbes 30.03.2018)
*all rights belong to Forbes Kazakhstan https://forbes.kz/process/urbanity/v_astane_otkroetsya_pervyiy_v_mire_hab-akselerator_umnyih_ustoychivyih_gorodov/
The relevant document was signed by the head of Investment and Development Authority of Astana Alisher Yelisovich Abdikadirov on March 26, 2018. International company Evercity, specialising in acceleration of innovative IT and green tech startups became the technological partner of the project.
Ambitious project of the hub, aimed at realization of Smart City components and attraction of international investments to Astana’s infrastructure is compliant with Kazakhstan’s state strategy: in Jan 2018, in his annual message to the people of Kazakhstan, president Nursultan Nazarbaev announced the goal to create the smart city reference standard based on the Astana case.
Project’s key feature will be the demonstration of smart and green cities solutions: robots and drones, Internet of Things, innovative financial solutions, artificial intelligence, bio tech and blockchain. Joint business plan of the accelerator and Astana government includes implementation of 10–15 solutions from different countries into the city’s infrastructure by the end of 2018. These measures will introduce improvements in the life quality of Kazakh people and solve a number of tasks the president named among the state priority in 2018.
In addition, international experts are planned to be attracted to educate Kazakh specialists and entrepreneurs on the aforementioned technologies.
The key result of collaboration between akimat and Evercity company (partner of ITU — UN agency in the field of information and communication technologies) will be the implementation of international UN smart sustainable cities standards. The same standards are currently being implemented in Dubai and Singapore.
Astana is one of the world’s youngest and most rapidly developing cities. That’s why it has a chance to be among the first to implement the new age technologies,— says Evercity partner and co-founder Alexey Shadrin. — Partnership with Evercity ecosystem will empower Astana not only to keep up with Singapore and Dubai, but even get ahead of them in modern technologies implementation, creating the new UN standards.
Evercity company’s partners will take active part in project realisation: Eurasian Economic Cooperation Organization, Fintech4Good international network, Moscow State Institute of International Affairs, “Russian Carbon” fund. “VTB Ecology” company, with which Evercity finalises partnership negotiations, plans to participate in the project. International payment system Qiwi and Singapore-based Life.SREDA VC have expressed their vivid interest.
