Innovations
UNICEF in Kazakhstan supports the innovation development to seek the best solutions for the benefit of children in Kazakhstan and globally

UNICEF in Kazakhstan supports the Government’s efforts to strengthen the country's capacity to promote the rights of children at the national, regional and global levels.
The UNICEF Innovation Programme supports the exchange of knowledge, experience and best practices between innovative laboratories and think tanks around the world by attracting young programmers, developers, and start-up entrepreneurs to create innovative ways to improve the lives of children. One of the achievements of UNICEF in Kazakhstan is the opening of the first in the CIS Innovation Lab at the International University of Information Technologies (IUIT) in Almaty in March 2017. The Lab promotes multilateral cooperation around innovative and technological ideas focused on children's issues, incubates and transforms these ideas into ready-for-market products.
The lab runs a comprehensive program for social entrepreneurs and innovators working for children, including workshops on the use of blockchain technology in socially important areas, project management, design, programming and marketing.
UNICEF and IITU hold hackathons, including as a part of EXPO-2017 “Innovations for Children in the Urbanized World”.
In 2017, UNICEF and partners conducted the world's first hackathon on the use of blockchain technology to promote children's rights. It gathered 200 businessmen and technical experts from Russian-speaking countries in Europe and Central Asia in the center of Astana to explore the potential of this technology in solving the most pressing problems affecting children.
The launch of the accelerator blockchain is scheduled for 2018-2019, it is a 12-week program aimed at creating youth investment projects and supporting the creation of infrastructure for the intensive development of start-ups in Kazakhstan.
In 2020, UNICEF together with the Science and Technology Park of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University launched an educational project UniSat for girls on development of nanosatellites, where participants learn about all the stages of creating a real spacecraft - from the design stage to launch.
Over the past 25 years, UNICEF has been improving access to data on childhood issues. The main part of UNICEF’s work is to collect and analyze data on children, especially on the most vulnerable, to consider the interests of every child. UNICEF
in Kazakhstan is working to create a data science hub to help exploit Kazakhstan’s analytical potential for the benefit of children and adolescents.