The Forum of New Opportunities Ideas for Women 2018 on the topic "Challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution” started May 31 in Astana. The mission of the Forum is to bring women's entrepreneurship in Kazakhstan to a new level that corresponds to global trends in the development of the world economy.

More than 300 women entrepreneurs from all over Kazakhstan, 150 companies took part in the forum. Twenty speakers from seven countries were invited. Among them, Mustafa Icil, marketing expert in digital strategies and innovations, Muzan Group CEO Diana Muzan, Agris Preimanis, head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Kazakhstan, Marek Jochec, professor of the Graduate School of Business at Nazarbayev University.

The organizer of the Forum, President of the Association of Business Women of Kazakhstan Raushan Sarsembayeva, greeted the participants with a welcoming speech. She noted that it is very important for the Kazakhstani businesswomen to keep up with the global economic trends that are significantly improving the efficiency and competitiveness of business through information technologies.

"The development of technologies is rapidly changing our world: state duties, utilities, money transfer from one city to another through mobile banking, etc. Today business cannot stay aside of this global development trend. In order to keep up, we need to equip ourselves with new tools today. This forum is not for IT professionals, not for programmers of a narrow profile. It is for the women's business, which today completely flooded the niche – about 40% in the SME are women. One who is faster to apply the tools of digital economy, digital communications, digital trade, will reach a new level," Raushan Sarsembayeva said.

According to her, the Association of Business Women of Kazakhstan is one of the first organizations that holds such an event and equips its participants with new knowledge, reminding them that the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution should be considered as a chance for the development of their business.

"Just yesterday, a member of our Association received a new, fully automated equipment in furniture production. If earlier she had 10 people, now only one person works. You can imagine how much hard labor at work is released. How much the production quality increases. How much the production time is reduced. All this makes it more competitive. And there are a lot of such examples," Sarsembayeva said.

At the opening of the forum, Minister of Information and Communications Dauren Abayev, in his turn, noted that the increasing role of women in the global economy is a stable trend of recent decades, and new information and communication technologies open new prospects for the development of women.

"As the Head of State noted, our task is to involve all strata of the Kazakh society in the development of the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In this vein, it is difficult to overestimate the role and importance of the Association of Business Women of Kazakhstan, which has become one of the largest representative public associations of the country," said Dauren Abayev.

Also, the minister spoke about the role of the Digital Kazakhstan State Program.

"Despite the enormous achievements of women's entrepreneurship, there is a huge potential. And the upcoming digital era is a new window of opportunity, thanks to which we will be able to realize this potential. The Digital Kazakhstan program includes a number of directions, among which a great interest for the business environment is the digitization of the economy. Within the framework of this direction, we intend to give a serious impetus to electronic commerce, including in rural areas," Abayev said.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is called upon to promote economic reforms in Kazakhstan by providing investment financing and consultations.

EBRD Head in Kazakhstan Agris Preimanis spoke about the existing challenges to gender inequality. According to him, there are 250 million less female internet users in the world. Even in developed countries, men dominate in such areas as industry, innovation, technology. However, Agris Preimanis also highlighted the positive aspects.

"There is such an interesting moment in innovation technologies: in the US, there is an increase in patents, which are filed by women. In Kazakhstan in 2010-2011, there was not a single female student in electronics or engineering. Today there is an equal number of girls and boys in STEM specialties," Preimanis said.

The EBRD head recommended using the potential and opportunities for digitalization to develop and improve further the conditions for women's participation in these areas.

As for the EBRD's contribution, according to Preimanis, the bank has been consulting on the introduction of digital technologies since 2001.

"Since that time, more than 400 companies have been trained in digitalization, that is, the introduction of new technologies, systems, businesss management, and new marketing approaches. Including more than 200 women entrepreneurs who have received training under our programs. Many of them had trainings on digitalization. We also issued more than 16 thousand loans to entrepreneurs through the second-tier banks. Most of them financed digitalization projects," Preimanis said.

At the opening ceremony of the forum, the presentation of YsyrApp start-up project was held, the creators of which are Kazakh schoolgirls — Nurbike Bolat, Leila Nurbek, Dildan Abdullayeva, Dariga and Rabiga Yestayeva. The essence of the project is to solve the problem of global waste and bring the Kazakh philosophy and the model of education "ysyrap" (Kazak — wastefulness, waste) to the world.

In the world, people throw food every day: 70% of food is consumed, 30% is thrown away, including 15% of restaurant food. The girls have developed a mobile application, by means of which they plan to solve this problem.

"If there is food in the restaurant, then someone might want to buy it. And we came to the idea that you can develop an application that will help solve the problem of a huge amount of food waste," young start-up developers said.

The two-day forum takes place in different formats: presentations, master classes, trainings from leading international and Kazakh experts.

On the first day of the forum, two panel sessions are held, at which participants discuss challenges for the Kazakh business in the light of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and new technologies to improve business efficiency.

On the second day, the participants of the forum will be provided with trainings on e-commerce, creation of online stores, promotion of products through social networks. The organizers are sure that in two days the forum participants will receive the knowledge, solutions and mechanisms that will allow them to reach a completely different level.

• 
• 
• 
•