Tajik officials earlier this year raised eyebrows with an expressed intent to transform the Central Asian into a hub for AI innovation.  If that is ever going to happen, they first must figure out how to wire the country with high-speed internet, Eurasianet reported on May 21.

According to the latest Speedtest Global Index, Tajikistan is the lowest ranked nation in Eurasia for fixed broadband connection speed, coming it at 117th out of 155 countries worldwide. Dushanbe did not even make the rankings for mobile connection speed.

Khurshed Faizullozoda, the head of the Presidential Agency for Innovation and Digital Technologies, blamed mountains for Tajikistan’s connectivity woes.  “Approximately 93 percent of the territory of Tajikistan is occupied by mountains, which complicates access to the Internet,” he was quoted as saying by Jumhuriyat newspaper, the mouthpiece if the government

He added that plans are being developed to add server capacity and install fiber-optic lines to improve Internet performance across the country. 

Eurasianet notes that Faizullozoda’s argument that Tajikistan’s mountainous topography impedes government digitalization efforts runs into trouble in comparison to the neighboring state of Kyrgyzstan, which is also predominantly mountainous.  Kyrgyzstan was 82nd in the Speedtest ranking for fixed broadband speed (with speed more than double that in Tajikistan), and 76th for mobile connectivity.

According to the index, Uzbekistan had the fastest fixed broadband Internet connectivity in Central Asia, ranking 76th globally.  Azerbaijan (86th) was deemed to have the best Internet performance in the Caucasus.  Georgia, which has traditionally ranked highly in surveys measuring economic freedom, sat at 114th, just ahead of Tajikistan, in the Speedtest index of broadband connection speed.