The thing that’s most striking about Kazakhstan’s internationalisation plans is how interwoven each of the points are. While many countries will have separate, independent ambitions that form part of their whole, Kazakhstan’s approach is far more complex. There’s a deeper understanding of the interplay between internationalisation, trade, skills and security than what might usually be expected.

Promoting itself under a Three M tagline, standing for “Middle Power, Middle Corridor and Middle Hub”, Kazakhstan has been touring the world recently, encouraging other countries to engage with it. A key selling point is the country’s role as a trade route with China, an opportunity it has grabbed since sanctions were placed on Russia.

But Kazakhstan has ambitions of its own to increase its position in the global supply chain. At the heart of that goal is a multipronged strategy with higher education and internationalisation at its foundation.

“We export oil, we export gas and minerals and rare earth metals, but we don't process them,” Minister for Education and Science Sayasat Nurbek tells QS Insights Magazine. “We are part of global chain at its lowest level by producing raw materials. We are not part of value-added chain.

“If you want to move up higher on value-added chain, you need workforce. You need trained people, professionals, engineers, who do the processing, who add value. To add value, it all comes in the end to your universities and colleges.”

Since taking on the portfolio of the Ministry of Education and Science two years ago, Minister Nurbek has spearheaded an ambitious program to use internationalisation of Kazakhstan’s higher education system to boost economic output. Offering several layers of government support, including funding, land and tax incentives, the results so far have been impressive.

In only two years, Kazakhstan has already welcomed 19 universities and consortiums, from countries including the US, UK, Korea, Germany and Hong Kong. With the exception of just one, all are in collaboration with existing Kazakhstani universities.

This approach, of bringing in international collaborations, serves several purposes. Minister Nurbek notes that to be part of the global supply chain, a country must meet global standards, which are difficult to understand and meet without assistance. At the same time, learning from the mistakes and successes of others will help to upscale the higher education system to eventually stand on its own.

“We need expertise,” he says. “We could do it in two ways. The long way, doing it ourselves, training our people abroad. But it's the long and painful way.”

Instead, the alternative route, using international collaboration, creates what he sees as “accelerated universities”. His argument for this approach is persuasive. “Solid research-intensive universities; it took them centuries to get there organically. MIT, Stanford, London School of Economics, Oxbridge, Harvard, Princeton. It took them years, decades, centuries,” Minister Nurbek notes.

“But take Nanyang Technological University [in Singapore], founded in 1991. In a mere span of 30 years, they made top 20 in the global rankings.”

As well as being internationally diverse, Minister Nurbek observes that the foreign universities which currently have presence in Kazakhstan are also geographically spread throughout the country. “The ultimate goal is to transform local public universities into strong research universities with support and in partnership with this foreign university,” he says.

How this relates to the goal of increasing Kazakhstan’s value add to the supply chain becomes clearer when Minister Nurbek says that the next goals for universities are “research, research, and research”. During a presentation before speaking to QS Insights Magazine, he stressed the country’s need for innovation and competitiveness, punctuating it with the idiom, “every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up and knows it needs to run faster than the fastest lion”.

Research, to Minister Nurbek, is innovation. If the global market is highly competitive and requires large amounts of innovation, then the solution becomes larger volumes of research. But, that can only be achieved through creating a world class higher education system, which can only be achieved through engaging with other world class systems.

To enter the global market and provide value-adds to the supply chain, Kazakhstan requires a global higher education system.