Cyrillic is/was a big part of Russia/USSR's identity from the west -- see things like "BORДT", faux Cyrillic [1], cheap exported Russian vodka, "СССР" on t-shirts, etc.
If Kazakhstan wants to appear less Russian, swapping the alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin will be very effective.
(I know the Latin alphabet but only a few letters of the Cyrillic one. It's far easier for me to read signs in Viet Nam than it is in Russia, even though I can probably pronounce Russian much better than Vietnamese. When I don't understand a word written in Cyrillic, it takes me 20 times longer to type it into my phone's dictionary.)
Sounds like how the BJP is about to force all high school students in India to learn Sanskrit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/world/asia/india-sanskrit...
Honestly I'm seeing it as a pure political decision and huge waste of money, not something, that would have any real benefit. Making Russian and English as an additional official government languages — now that would be useful. Currently almost noone except highly educated people knows English and a lot of people don't know Russian or know it very poorly and it's sad. For Kazakhstan, Russia is a most important neighbor and it's very important to keep common cultural values.