End Of The Digital Divide

Fast-spreading digital revolution offers a new growth path for India and other emerging nations

- Ruchir Sharma

Emerging economies struggled to grow through the 2010s, and pessimism shrouds them now. People wonder how they will pay debts rung up during the pandemic, and how they can grow rapidly as they did in the past – by exporting their way to prosperity – in an era of deglobalisation.

The freshest of many answers to this riddle is the fast spreading digital revolution. Emerging nations are adopting cutting edge technology at a lower and a lower cost, which is allowing them to fuel domestic demand and overcome traditional obstacles to growth. Over the last decade the number of smartphone owners has skyrocketed from 150 million to 4 billion worldwide. More than half the world’s population now carries the power of a supercomputer in their pockets, allowing more and more residents of the emerging world to access vital consumer and professional services for the first time.

The world’s largest emerging market has already demonstrated the transformative effects of digital technology. As China’s old rust belt industries slowed sharply over the last decade, and ran up debts that threatened to explode in crisis only a few years ago, the booming tech sector saved the economy.

Now, often by adopting rather than innovating, China’s emerging market peers are getting a push from the same digital engines. A recent report from the Boston Consulting Group shows that since 2014 more than 10,000 tech firms have been launched in emerging markets – nearly half of them outside China.