Kazakhstan 🇰🇿

Kazakhstan is a sovereign country in Central Asia, in the wider region of Asia. Treaties and official documents call it Republic of Kazakhstan. Government sits in Astana.

It is home to roughly 20.6 million people, placing it 64th of 250 by population — between Zambia above it and Chad below. Among the 5 entries in Central Asia it ranks 1st by area and 2nd by population.

The land area is 2,724,900 km², which ranks it 10th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Argentina and just ahead of Algeria. That makes it almost exactly the same size as Argentina.

Kazakhstan has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: China and Russia have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Kazakhstan's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Kazakhstan's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Of the countries on Kazakhstan's borders, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are landlocked as well, so a route in that direction only moves the problem along. The remaining borders are the ones that lead, eventually, to salt water.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇨🇳 China
• 🇷🇺 Russia

Its reference point sits at 48.0° north and 68.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 5,343 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Mongolia, Ukraine and France.

Its land neighbours number 5: China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The largest of them by area is Russia, while the most populous is China. Together those neighbours hold about 1.60 billion people.

Kazakhstan is landlocked. That is true of 45 of the 250 entries here, and it means every shipment in or out has to cross someone else's border first. 3 of its neighbours, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are landlocked too. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Spread across 2,724,900 km², that works out at about 7.6 people per square kilometre, which makes it very thinly populated. The median across all 250 entries here is about 90 per square kilometre.

The demonym is Kazakhstani, so residents are Kazakhstanis.

It recognises 2 languages: Kazakh and Russian. Kazakh is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Kazakhstan.

Against Asia as a whole it is the 25th most populous of 50 entries, and it accounts for 25% of everyone living in Central Asia.

Zoom in from the world to Central Asia and Kazakhstan sits 2nd of 5 by population and 1st by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Uzbekistan just above and Tajikistan just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Uzbekistan is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Central Asia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇺🇿 Uzbekistan
• 🇹🇯 Tajikistan
• 🇺🇿 Uzbekistan

It uses the Kazakhstani tenge (₸, KZT). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to Kazakhstan.

The top-level domain is .kz. The international dialling code is +7. In ISO terms it is kz in two letters and KAZ in three.

Astana is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

Kazakhstan is one of the 193 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.

The Kazakhstani tenge (KZT) is used only in Kazakhstan among the 250 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Russian is listed for 8 entries here, Kazakhstan among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.