Language

Official language
Azerbaijani 92.5%

T-index
0.053%

T-Index ranks countries according to their potential for online sales.

Other languages
Russian 1.5% and Armenian 1%

Lezgic

A Lezgic language, Lezgian is spoken by the Lezgins living in northern Azerbaijan. It is classified as a vulnerable language by UNESCO.

Avar

A language of the Northeast Caucasian family, Avar is spoken in parts of north-western Azerbaijan and Dagestan. It is spoken by about 762,000 people worldwide.

Taylish

The Talysh language, an Iranian language, is spoken in parts of Iran and southern Azerbaijan. Although it has about 500,000 to 1 million speakers, its popularity is constantly decreasing. Thus, UNESCO also classifies this language as vulnerable in its Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger

English
Very low proficiency (EF) – 92 of 112 countries/regions in the world- 35/35 position in Europe.

Demography

Capital: Baku
Currency: Azerbaijani manat
Population: 10,15 billion
Population density: 122/km2

Economy

GDP: 154.62 billion USD (2021)
GDP per capita: 5,384.0 USD ‎(2021) ‎
Exports: $13.8 billion (2020)

Statistics

Internet users: 81.1% penetration, 8.32 billion
Unemployment rate: 7.2% (2020)
Urbanisation: 53.06% (2020)
Literacy: 100% (2019)

Conventions

Numbering system
Arabic numbering system, point as decimal separator and space or comma as separator of thousands.

Date format: yyyy-mm-dd
Time: 24h time system
Country code: 0099

Economy

Imports
$10.7 billion (2020). Cars ($615M), Gas Turbines ($321M), Packaged Medicaments ($302M), Wheat ($289M), and Broadcasting Equipment ($244M), importing mostly from Russia ($2.03B), Turkey ($2.03B), China ($936M), Germany ($473M), and United Kingdom ($448M).

Financial inclusion factors (over 15 years of  age)
• 29% have an account with a financial institution
• 5.3% have a credit card
• 9.4% make online purchases

Ease of doing business
Very Easy to conduct business (76.7 out of 100) 7th out of 24 European and Central Asian countries, 34th worldwide out of 190 countries (2022, World Bank)

Exports
$13.8 billion (2020). Crude Petroleum ($9.3B), Petroleum Gas ($2.2B), Refined Petroleum ($292M), Gold ($211M), and Tomatoes ($201M), exporting mostly to Italy ($4.06B), Turkey ($2.61B), Russia ($728M), Greece ($514M), and Georgia ($490M).

Economic freedom
‘Moderately free’ (61.6 out of 100) 37th out of 45 countries in Europe 100th worldwide out of 186 countries (2022, Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal)

Global Innovation Index
Ranked 16th out of 19 Central and Southern Asian countries, 93rd out of 132 worldwide.

The Global Innovation Index captures the innovation
ecosystem performance of 132 economies and tracks the most recent global innovation trends.

Media

Media language
Russian, English, Azerbaijani 

Information channels
Dissenting voices are practically absent from mainstream media and critical journalists risk arrest and imprisonment.

“President Ilham Aliyev has been waging a relentless war against his remaining critics”, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in 2017. The organisation reported “independent journalists and bloggers are thrown in prison if they do not first yield to harassment, beatings, blackmail, or bribes.”

TV is the most popular medium and many homes are served by satellite channels. All Azerbaijan-based channels toe the government line. Some networks are owned by relatives or associates of the president. State-owned AzTV runs three national channels and there are four national privately-owned stations. State-funded iTV is a notional public service broadcaster. Turkish, Russian and Western TVs are available on cable. Opposition and exile TVs use satellite and online distribution. Analogue terrestrial TV was phased out in 2016-17. Radio outlets focus on entertainment. Around a dozen stations are on FM in Baku and many of them are relayed elsewhere. Most newspapers were set up for political or personal interests. Their distribution is largely limited to Baku. US-based Freedom House reports that although the government does not extensively block online content, web users and their families can “face arrest and intimidation, and pro-government trolling distorts political discussions”.

Press

Azarbaycan – government daily
Azadliq – opposition, online
Ekho – private daily, in Russian
Zerkalo – private daily, in Russian
Yeni Musavat – opposition title
Yeni Azarbaycan – ruling party house organ
Ekspress – weekly
525 Qazet – weekly

Television

AzTV – state-run, operates three networks
iTV – state-funded
Space TV – private
Lider TV – private
Azad Azarbaycan (ATV) – private

Radio

Azerbaijan Radio – state-run
Public Radio – state-funded

News Agencies

Azartac – state-run, English-language pages
Turan – private, English-language pages
Trend – private, English-language pages
APA – private, English-language pages
Day.az – news website, in Russian

Internet Data

Internet users
81.1% penetration, 8.32 billion

Share of web traffic by device
61.89% mobile phones, 37.10% computers (laptops and desktops), 0.96% tablet devices, others 0.06%

Median speed of mobile Internet connection
28.25 Mbps

Median speed of fixed Internet connection
16.47 Mbps

Mobile connection as a percentage of total population 116.1%

Percentage of mobile connections that are broadband (3G-5G) 84.3%

Most popular web search engines
Google (94.11%), Yandex (3.48%), Bing (0.83%), Yahoo (0.24%), DuckDuckgo (0.12%), Mail.ru (0.13%)

Most used social media
Facebook (30.16%), YouTube (21.21%), Pinterest (18.32%), Instagram (17.29%), Twitter (8.45%), Linkedin 1.6%