Representatives of the Kyrgystan Government came to Wales in the week beginning 7 March 2016, visiting Cardiff, where their programme was organized by the Welsh Government, and Aberystwyth where arrangements were in the hands of the writers' organization Wales PEN Cymru and Aberystwyth University's Mercator Institute / Wales Literature Exchange.

Toktobubu Ashymbaeva Abasovna, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of the Kyrgyz Republic and Ergeshov Zaiyrbek Jolchuevich, Deputy Head of the Department of Ethnic, Religious Policies and Interaction of the Kyrgyz Republic, were particularly interested in bilingual policies in the fields of education, culture and publishing, and took part in a whole morning of research seminars at the Mercator Institute.

Kyrgyz, a Turkic language, is spoken by a majority of the population but has been marginalized in many domains as a result of Russification policies in the former Soviet Union. The Kyrgystan Government is seeking to reestablish Kyrgyz as the national language while at the same time making provision for its own substantial Uzbek-speaking population and many smaller minorities who have historically used Russian rather than Kyrgyz as the lingua franca.