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.

According to the latest Speedtest Global Index, Tajikistan is the lowest ranked nation in Eurasia for fixed broadband connection speed, coming in 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 the government publication Jumhuriyat. 

He added that plans are being developed to add server capacity and install fibre-optic lines to improve internet performance across the country. He went on to make a vague reference to the “private sector” playing an “important role” in the process.

“A 5G network will be fully implemented in the country soon,” Faizullozoda promised, without delving into specifics, Asia-Plus reported.

Faizullozoda’s argument that Tajikistan’s mountainous topography impedes government digitalisation efforts runs into trouble in comparison to the neighbouring 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.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.