Tokayev in Berlin: Kazakhstan looks to Germany to turn multi-vector diplomacy into industrial results

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev arrived in Germany on 28 September for a three-day official visit at the invitation of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Talks with Steinmeier and Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a German-Kazakh business forum in Berlin, and a technology-focused stop in Munich are meant to deepen a strategic partnership that Astana treats as more than a commercial relationship.

Kassym-Jomart #Tokayev arrived in #Germany on Monday for an official visit at the invitation of Federal President Frank-Walter #Steinmeier https://t.co/20BuAfcRZo @aqorda_press @TokayevKZ @F_W_Steingeier @bundeskanzler @MFA_KZ @GermanyDiplo #Kazakhstan pic.twitter.com/vNIwCktcXf
— Kazinform (@kazinform_eng) September 28, 2026

For Kazakhstan, wedged between Russia and China, that extra dimension matters. The country has spent three decades practising multi-vector foreign policy: keep close economic and security ties with its two giant neighbours while widening options with the European Union, the United States, Turkey and others so that no single power becomes the only outlet for trade, technology or political room for manoeuvre. Germany, as Europe’s largest economy and Kazakhstan’s leading partner in Central Asia, is one of the few EU members that can give that balancing strategy industrial substance rather than just diplomatic language.

Bilateral trade reached about $4.4 billion in 2025, and German firms have invested roughly $7.8 billion in Kazakhstan since 2005, much of it outside raw extraction. More than 1,100 companies with German capital operate in the country. Kazakhstan accounts for around 80 percent of Germany’s trade with Central Asia.

Those numbers explain why Berlin is on the itinerary. They do not, by themselves, answer the harder question posed in an analysis by The Astana Times: whether the relationship can move “from deals to delivery.”

What is actually on the table

Today’s German-Kazakh business forum in Berlin is expected to gather about 300 officials and executives. Organisers have signalled the presentation of 37 bilateral projects worth €1.8 billion covering raw materials, energy, industry, transport and logistics. Steinmeier and Tokayev are due to address the forum after their bilateral meeting; Merz is scheduled to receive Tokayev later in the day. The Munich leg is intended to tap Bavaria’s manufacturing and engineering base. Bavaria already leads German federal states in trade with Kazakhstan, at €3.4 billion in 2025.

Ahead of the trip, Tokayev used a Handelsblatt commentary to make the commercial pitch explicit. Kazakhstan, he wrote, already produces 21 of the 34 raw materials the EU classifies as strategically important, including lithium, silicon, cobalt, niobium, tungsten and copper. He offered Germany not only supply contracts but joint value chains – from exploration and mining through processing, component manufacturing and recycling – plus cooperation in metallurgy, petrochemicals, food and rail-vehicle construction.

That offer matches a shift described by Valeriy Sitenko of Kazakhstan’s Institute of Foreign Policy Studies: the country wants to stop being treated mainly as a transit space and become a production and technology hub inside global value chains. Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov made the same point in June when he met German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche, calling for localisation, technology transfer and training rather than another round of commodity-for-capital deals.

Germany has reasons of its own. After successive shocks to energy and industrial supply, Berlin wants diversified sources of oil, critical minerals and intermediate goods. Kazakhstan already ships crude to the Schwedt refinery and was Germany’s fourth-largest oil supplier in 2025. The Middle Corridor, running across the Caspian toward the Black Sea and EU markets, gives that diversification a physical route that does not depend on a single northern neighbour.

The gap between strategy and contracts

The Astana Times analysis is useful precisely because it refuses to treat the visit as automatically transformative. German companies remain cautious. Kazakhstan’s domestic market is small. Experts such as Stephan Meister argue that rule of law, transparency and the broader business climate have not improved enough to justify large industrial bets, and that German policy still lacks a coherent political vision for Central Asia. Germany’s own strained public finances and weaker risk appetite compound the problem.

There is a record of signed paper that did not automatically become factories. Olaf Scholz’s 2024 visit produced 36 documents worth $6.3 billion. Some projects have moved – CLAAS and Horsch have begun phased localisation of agricultural machinery; KfW IPEX-Bank and Solidcore Resources signed a $100 million term sheet this year for the Ertis hydrometallurgical plant – but the test of this week is whether new documents come with financing, offtake and a timetable.

Institutional scaffolding already exists: the Central Asia–Germany format launched in Berlin in 2023, regular investment roundtables, and ministry-to-ministry platforms. What is missing, the Astana analysis argues, is conversion of that scaffolding into projects that keep more value inside Kazakhstan and still look commercially rational to German boards.

Why the balancing argument still holds

None of this requires Kazakhstan to choose against Russia or China. China remains its largest trading partner; Russia remains a neighbour, a security interlocutor and a transit factor. Multi-vector policy is designed to keep those relationships while adding European technology, standards, dual education models and alternative corridors. The EU cannot replace geography. It can, if German capital and know-how actually land, reduce the cost of living next to two much larger powers.

That is the stake of the Berlin and Munich meetings. The welcome at the airport was ceremonial. The question after the forums will be narrower and more demanding: whether a partnership that already looks impressive on paper can produce processing plants, localised manufacturing and trained technicians, in a relation based on mutual benefit.

This article draws on reporting by EUalive’s partner The Astana Times.

Caption: President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev arrives in Germany, 28 September 2026