Sri Lanka and Kazakhstan hold high-level talks on a national AI data centre and digital public infrastructure

Sri Lanka and Kazakhstan have opened high-level discussions on collaborating over national AI data infrastructure, digital public infrastructure and advanced AI governance frameworks. The bilateral meeting was held on November 13 at the Ministry of Digital Economy under the chairmanship of Deputy Minister Eng. Eranga Weeraratne, with Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya, Senior Advisor to the President on the Digital Economy and Chairman of GovTech, and Ms. Assem Kappar, Chief Expert of Kazakhstan's Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, among the key participants.

Learning from Kazakhstan's national AI data centre

A primary focus of the talks was Kazakhstan's national AI data centre model, particularly its capacity, sovereign hosting and direct government investment strategy aimed at ensuring data sovereignty. Both sides agreed to exchange technical expertise on capacity assessments, power requirements and capital investment parameters for Sri Lanka's proposed national AI data centre.

Digital platforms shared

The delegation also shared insights into Kazakhstan's digital integration models, including the Smart Bridge platform for public-private service interoperability across sectors such as health and real estate. Discussions further covered the National Data Exchange (NDX) for stringent security and anti-fraud standards, a unified SuperApp ecosystem, the e-Gov GPT public service interface, a secure internal GPT for public officials and Kazakhstan's domestic large language model, KazLLM. Officials said the partnership could help build a sovereign, secure and citizen-centric digital state through international cooperation.

The discussions concern technical cooperation and a proposed centre. They do not establish that Sri Lanka has already built the facility or committed a final construction budget.