Beyond geopolitics: Agency and modularity in mobile telecommunications in Kazakhstan

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Much of the discourse on U.S.-China tech decoupling has centered on trade and geopolitics, often overlooking the ground-level realities of developing countries and their strategic digital choices. The telecommunication industry, with its international supply chain and long-term orientation, is a particularly interesting locus to explore distributed and ground-up agency in countries that depend on Western and Chinese tech giants. In this talk, I draw on fieldwork in Kazakhstan conducted in 2022 and 2023, primary and secondary sources, to describe the decision-making process in building and maintaining mobile telecom infrastructure. I identify three key constraints shaping this process – market and network structures, distribution and procurement process, and (geo)political and security considerations. Within these constraints, I uncover spaces for agency at different levels and highlight the ability of different actors – from engineers to telecom companies’ management – to influence choices in hardware, software and financing. I argue that the strategic role of telecom firms in national economies, the industry’s long-term orientation and modularity, and the firms’ ownership structures serve as important counterbalances to sudden disruptions caused by international politics. In a digital world increasingly shaped by competition between U.S. and Chinese tech giants, findings from Kazakhstan highlight the potential for developing countries to carve their own digital trajectories and offer a framework for future research to extend this analysis to other sectors and regions.

Oyuna Baldakova is an affiliate researcher on the ERC-funded DIGISILK project in the Digital Humanities Department at King’s College London. Her research focuses on various aspects of the Digital Silk Road and its diverse actors in Kazakhstan, including telecom infrastructure development and the role of Huawei, as well as domestic electronics production and its connections to Chinese suppliers. She is also finishing her PhD studies at the Free University of Berlin, where her dissertation examines the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure and industrial projects in Kazakhstan.

Oyuna holds a Master’s degree in Modern East Asian Studies from Goethe University Frankfurt and has a diverse background in international development, including experience with EU International Partnerships and UNESCO Bangkok. She has conducted research and written for several organizations, including the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Carnegie Endowment, Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), International Transport Workers’ Federation, and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).