Under the title “What is the future of innovation-driven growth?”, the Global Innovation Index 2022 shows Uzbekistan’s ranking has increased by 4 places to 82nd out of 135 countries. This means they enter the category of 10 rapidly rising countries with is indicated as being due to implementation of consistent and fundamentally important reforms. As it stands, Uzbekistan aims to reach the top 50 by 2030.

The GII report is drawn up in conjunction with the European Institute of Business Management, WIPO, Cornell University, and specialist UN agencies. In the past years the Coronavirus pandemic, which had a long-lasting negative impact on economies across the globe, also strongly impeded the WIPO’s general capability to assess these economies during this period. The ranking is composed of evaluating human capital, infrastructure, and investment of a country concerning innovative opportunities (overall, around 80 pointers are used to evaluate the countries’ economies) which in turn is used by corporations and governments to make judgements on the innovation situation of a country.

In September of 2022, a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, took place in the southeast of Uzbekistan in Samarqand in which among other things Uzbekistan’s progress under this collaboration was discussed. The SCO is an intergovernmental organization originally consisting of China, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan with Uzbekistan joining in 2001. The organization aims to strengthen cooperation between these regions with increased intelligence sharing, and collaboration on military and counterterrorism as well as economic issues. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has played an important role in improving Uzbekistan’s international rankings across various areas by signing various agreements. Uzbekistan’s rise in the rankings means it has entered the list of top three countries in Central and South Asia with India leading in 40th, Iran in 53rd and Uzbekistan in 82nd place (having overtaken Kazakhstan). Uzbekistan is going up in the ranks in terms of innovation although when it comes to the list of countries with below-average income, they rank 10th. Uzbekistan’s main aim for the future under the Strategy for Innovative Development of Uzbekistan (2019-2021) is the development of human capital that matches the development of the world economy.

For Uzbekistan to reach their goal by 2030, the Concept of Science Development proposes an increase in state funding for academic research at universities, especially prestigious ones (meaning indicators such as published articles, citations thereof, attendance of international conferences and seminars, as well as patent statistics etc.). Principally, Uzbekistan sees its ranking by the WIPO in the GII as an important indicator of its sustainable development, state control and general quality of life of the Uzbek population and has so far been seeing improvements notably in comparison to its neighbouring countries.