On May 12, Kazakhstan hosted Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for an official visit, during which more than 20 commercial agreements valued at
over $5 billion were signed, according to a statement from Akorda, the presidential press service.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev welcomed the Crown Prince and highlighted the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as one of Kazakhstan’s key strategic partners. He noted that both nations share aligned interests and ambitions. In 2023, they signed a Joint Declaration on strategic investment projects, and in 2024, direct investment from the UAE into Kazakhstan more than doubled.
Crown Prince Al Nahyan emphasized the growing depth of bilateral relations, which now extend beyond traditional trade and investment to include sectors such as energy, transportation, digital infrastructure, and education.
Key agreements include:
- Samruk Kazyna National Wealth Fund and Masdar signed a cooperation deal to develop continuous power supply projects up to 500 megawatts (MW) and energy storage systems with a capacity of 2,000 MW.
- Samruk Kazyna and AIQ, an Abu Dhabi-based AI firm, agreed on strategic collaboration for digitizing Kazakhstan’s oil and gas sector.
- The fund also signed a memorandum of understanding with Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank.
- Presight and Kazakhstan entered an agreement to establish a supercomputer cluster in the country.
- KazMunayGas partnered with Abu Dhabi Ports Group to expand Kazakhstan’s merchant fleet.
- QazaqGaz reached a strategic cooperation agreement with AIQ on digital innovations in the oil and gas industry.
Additional documents included memorandums on cooperation in road transport and between the two countries' justice ministries.
Infrastructure and social investment projects were also part of the visit, including:
- Financing and construction of a new maternity hospital in Turkistan.
- Investment in the development of Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport in Astana and its surrounding area.
- A finalized government agreement for a wind power plant project.
The agreements underscore a significant step forward in strengthening the Kazakhstan-UAE partnership across multiple strategic sectors. Photo by Bernard Gagnon, Wikimedia commons.
