The story of the digital age is often told as one of freedom, connection, and opportunity. Yet beneath that story lies a quieter reality, a struggle that is rarely discussed but deeply important: the fight for digital sovereignty. For many developing nations, the internet has not brought independence but a new kind of dependency, one where global tech giants hold the keys to data, communication, and even the way people think online.
When we talk about sovereignty, we usually imagine borders, armies, and governments. In today’s world, however, sovereignty also lives in invisible servers, in the algorithms that shape what we see, and in the contracts that decide who owns the data we generate. For countries like Nepal, the promise of digital transformation is often tied to technologies built and controlled far away. Cloud services, social media platforms, search engines, and even basic operating systems are dominated by a handful of multinational corporations. This creates a dependence that is as real as any economic or political one.
In practice, this means that much of a nation’s digital life is shaped by decisions made in boardrooms thousands of kilometers away. A change in a platform’s policy can alter how small businesses advertise. A tweak to an algorithm can decide which voices are amplified and which remain invisible. A server outage in another country can paralyze local services that communities rely on. The dependence is so deeply woven into daily life that most people hardly notice it, yet it defines the limits of what digital freedom really means.
Nepal provides a clear example of this struggle. While internet penetration has grown rapidly, almost all of the platforms people rely on for communication, business, and information are foreign-owned. Facebook and TikTok dominate social life. Google controls search, education tools, and even email for businesses and government offices. Cloud services that store sensitive data often sit in servers outside the country, raising questions about security and control. Local alternatives exist, but they struggle to compete against the scale, funding, and influence of global giants.
This is not just a Nepali story. Across the developing world, governments are beginning to realize how fragile their digital independence is. Some respond with heavy-handed regulations or even internet shutdowns, hoping to assert control. Others try to build local platforms, often with limited success. The truth is that competing with trillion-dollar companies is nearly impossible without long-term investment, vision, and collaboration. Yet without such efforts, digital sovereignty risks becoming nothing more than a dream.
The consequences of this dependency go beyond technology. They touch on culture, identity, and democracy itself. If the tools we use to speak, learn, and organize are owned elsewhere, then the power to shape societies is also held elsewhere. For small nations, this is a subtle but profound loss of agency. Decisions about what is allowed online, what data is collected, and how it is used are not made by local communities or elected leaders, but by distant corporations with global priorities.
The path forward will not be easy. Digital sovereignty does not mean cutting off from the world, but building the capacity to participate on fairer terms. This could mean stronger data protection laws, investment in local technology ecosystems, or regional cooperation to balance the influence of global players. For Nepal, it also means creating awareness among citizens that digital dependency carries risks, and that true literacy is not just about using technology but about understanding who controls it.
The struggle for digital sovereignty is one of the defining issues of our time. Developing nations cannot afford to be passive users in a global economy where power is concentrated in the hands of a few. If the future is digital, then sovereignty must also be digital. Without it, the promise of technology may turn into another form of dependency, one that is harder to see but no less powerful in shaping the destiny of nations.