Five companies — Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta — form the digital foundation for most of the world. But not all of it. And the exceptions are as revealing as the rule.

In China, payments run on Alipay and WeChat Pay, not Visa. In India, UPI processes more transactions than Visa and Mastercard combined — on its own infrastructure. In Kenya, sending money requires not a bank account but a mobile phone with M-Pesa.

These regions are not less digital. They are differently dependent. And in that difference lies the key: digital dependency is not a European problem. It is a global pattern. Only the names change.

This article examines how digital infrastructure is built in each world region — who controls it, where the concentration risks lie, and what alternatives already exist.

World map of digital dependency by region
US-dominated
Closed proprietary system
Active decoupling
Dual dependency USA/China
Hybrid / fragmented

Table of contents

The Americas

USA and Canada: The origin of the dependency

The United States is simultaneously the origin and the epicentre of the problem. The five major platforms — Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta — are American companies, subject to American law, and can be restricted in their operations through Executive Orders.

This means: even within the United States, a concentration risk exists. US companies that build their entire infrastructure on AWS are just as dependent as European ones — they simply do not face the risk of a jurisdictional conflict. Instead, they face the risk of political instrumentalisation, as the Anthropic case demonstrates.

Canada is de facto fully integrated into the US tech stack. Same products, same cloud regions, same payment networks. Proximity to the United States has ensured that an independent digital infrastructure never emerged. Canadian companies use Microsoft 365, AWS and Visa/Mastercard like their US counterparts — without the protection of operating within the same jurisdiction.

Latin America: The silent dependency

From Mexico to Argentina, the US tech stack dominates almost completely. Windows on the desktops, Google and Microsoft in the schools, WhatsApp as the communications infrastructure — not just for private use, but for business communication, customer service and contact with authorities.

The dependency runs particularly deep because it is invisible. There is virtually no public debate about digital sovereignty. Cloud infrastructure comes almost exclusively from AWS and Azure. Local cloud providers exist, but they serve niches, not the mass market.

Payments: Visa and Mastercard dominate the card market. Local networks like SPEI in Mexico exist for bank transfers but do not cover the card payment market.

Key point: Latin America has the highest WhatsApp penetration in the world. In many countries, WhatsApp IS the digital infrastructure — for small businesses, for the state, for the healthcare system. A WhatsApp shutdown would not only disrupt communication but paralyse entire economic sectors.

Brazil: Own path, halfway there

Brazil deserves its own section because it is the only country in Latin America actively pushing back.

Payments: PIX is a real-time payment system run by Brazil’s central bank with over 175 million users. For domestic payments, Brazil has created a functional alternative to Visa/Mastercard — in three years, from zero.

Data protection: The LGPD is modelled on the European data protection framework and creates a legal basis for data sovereignty.

Cloud: Here the dependency remains. AWS and Azure dominate. Brazilian cloud providers like Locaweb serve the local market but cannot match the hyperscalers’ scale.

The picture: Brazil shows that decoupling in payments can happen quickly (PIX), but in cloud infrastructure is considerably harder. The lower layers — operating systems, productivity software, cloud — remain US-dominated.

Europe

EU core states: Awareness is growing

Western Europe is the subject of our existing articles, so here just the summary: dependency on US technology is deep and chained — identity (Entra ID), productivity (Microsoft 365), cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP), payments (Visa/Mastercard).

What sets Europe apart from other regions: there is a regulatory counterweight. The GDPR, the EU AI Act, the Data Act — Europe is building the world’s strictest regulatory framework. Whether this also produces its own infrastructure is the open question. France (LaSuite), Germany (openDesk) and the Netherlands (OpenDesktop NL) are building real alternatives — but adoption is slow, and the private sector remains almost entirely on Microsoft.

EU Eastern Europe: Dependent, without alternatives

Poland, Czechia, Romania, the Baltic states: the digital infrastructure is the same as in Western Europe — Microsoft, Google, AWS — but there is no local alternative and no political momentum to build one. The IT sectors in these countries are strong, but they work as suppliers to Western companies, not on their own infrastructure.

Key point: The Baltic states, especially Estonia with its e-government infrastructure (X-Road, e-Residency), are the exception. Estonia has built a sovereign digital identity layer — albeit on top of US cloud infrastructure underneath.

Non-EU Europe: Between two chairs

United Kingdom: Post-Brexit with its own data protection framework (UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018), but with full US tech dependency. Close intelligence cooperation (Five Eyes) makes decoupling politically unthinkable.

Switzerland: Strong tradition of data protection neutrality. Proton (Mail, VPN, Drive) and Threema are Swiss products with global reach. But the corporate infrastructure — cloud, productivity, operating systems — is just as US-dependent as everywhere else in Europe.

Norway: Oil-fund-financed prosperity, but no domestic tech infrastructure whatsoever. Full US dependency.

Post-Soviet space: Forced decoupling

Russia is the only case worldwide in which the scenario from our risk audit became reality. 2022: Microsoft suspends new sales. Google restricts services. Apple Pay stops working. Visa and Mastercard block Russian cards.

The response: forced indigenous development. Mir as a payment card. Yandex Cloud as an AWS replacement. VKontakte and Telegram as communication platforms. It works — but it also shows the cost: a closed system under state control, without the quality and innovation of the global market.

Ukraine: A counterexample. In the middle of a war, fully reliant on US cloud infrastructure — and explicitly grateful for it, because it works and is defended against Russian attacks. A case in which dependency on US technology is not the risk but the lifeline. It demonstrates: the assessment of dependency is context-dependent.

Asia

China: The closed system

China is the only case worldwide in which a complete, parallel tech stack exists.

FunctionGlobalChina
SearchGoogleBaidu
CloudAWS, Azure, GCPAlibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud
CommunicationWhatsApp, TeamsWeChat
PaymentsVisa, MastercardAlipay, WeChat Pay
Operating systemWindows, iOSWindows (still), HarmonyOS, Linux variants

The Chinese system demonstrates that a complete alternative stack is possible. But it also shows the price: the Great Firewall has created a closed ecosystem in which dependency on US technology has been replaced by dependency on the Chinese state. For users, the concentration of power has shifted, not dissolved.

Relevance to other regions: Chinese tech companies are expanding aggressively — Alibaba Cloud in Southeast Asia, Huawei infrastructure in Africa, TikTok globally. For countries seeking to break free from US technology, the question arises: is Chinese dependency the alternative?

Japan and South Korea: High-tech, deeply dependent

Both countries are technological heavyweights — and yet deeply embedded in the US stack.

Japan: Corporate infrastructure runs on AWS and Azure. Government runs on Windows. Payments run on Visa/Mastercard (international) and local systems like Suica (transit/retail). What Japan does have is LINE as its dominant communication platform — independent of Meta. But LINE belongs to a Softbank/Naver joint venture, not the Japanese state. Cloud sovereignty: virtually non-existent.

South Korea: Similar picture, but with stronger local platforms. Naver is the dominant search engine (not Google). Kakao dominates messaging (KakaoTalk, approx. 90 % market share) and has its own ecosystem (KakaoPay, KakaoBank, KakaoT). Samsung supplies the devices. But the cloud underneath? AWS. And the operating system on the workstations? Windows.

The pattern: Local platforms for communication and payments, US dependency for the base infrastructure (cloud, operating systems, identity).

India: The most aggressive decoupling

India is running the world’s most ambitious state-driven strategy for digital self-reliance — and it is working.

Payments: UPI is the success story. Over 16 billion transactions per month, free for end users, open to all banks. Complemented by RuPay as a domestic card alternative to Visa/Mastercard. India has largely resolved the dependency in payments.

Identity: Aadhaar — the world’s largest biometric identity system. Over 1.4 billion entries. It replaces the function that Entra ID or national eID systems fulfil in Europe — but on state-run, not commercial infrastructure.

Communication: WhatsApp dominates with over 500 million users. Here, India has no alternative — and the dependency on Meta is enormous.

Cloud: AWS and Azure dominate the Indian market. Indian cloud providers exist but primarily serve government projects. The private sector runs on US infrastructure.

The picture: India has successfully decoupled the upper layers (payments, identity). The lower layers (cloud, operating systems, communication) remain dependent. But the political direction is clear: TikTok was banned in 2020, and the government actively promotes local alternatives.

Southeast Asia: Fast-growing, fully exposed

Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia: the fastest-growing digital market in the world — and the least prepared.

Cloud: Exclusively AWS, Azure, GCP and increasingly Alibaba Cloud. Local providers are virtually non-existent.

Payments: Fragmented. GoPay and OVO in Indonesia, GrabPay across several countries — but all private platforms, no state infrastructure like UPI or PIX.

Communication: WhatsApp, LINE (Thailand), Facebook Messenger — all US platforms (LINE technically belongs to the Naver/Softbank group, but the dependency stands).

Key point: Southeast Asia faces a dual dependency. The existing infrastructure is American. The growing alternative is Chinese (Alibaba Cloud, Huawei networks, TikTok). The ASEAN states have no joint strategy for digital sovereignty. They are navigating between two dependencies without an alternative of their own.

Central Asia: Between Moscow and Beijing

Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan: post-Soviet infrastructure, increasing Chinese investment, US tech products for the surface layer.

The digital infrastructure is thin. Where it exists, it is split three ways: Russian telecommunications infrastructure from the Soviet era, Chinese hardware investment (Huawei networks), and US software for the end user (Windows, Google, WhatsApp). Digital sovereignty of their own? Not on the agenda.

Middle East and North Africa

Gulf states: Sovereignty as state project

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain are pursuing the most lavishly funded digital sovereignty strategy in the world — financed by oil and gas revenues.

Saudi Arabia: NEOM as a technology city, mada as a local payment network, Saudi Cloud Computing Company as a local provider. Vision 2030 designates digital self-reliance as a strategic goal.

UAE: AWS, Microsoft and Google all have cloud regions in the UAE. Abu Dhabi has invested in the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) and the Falcon AI model. Indigenous AI development as a sovereignty strategy.

The paradox: The Gulf states are investing heavily in their own technology — but the base infrastructure (AWS regions in Bahrain and the UAE) is US-controlled. They are building the upper layer (AI models, payments) while the foundations remain American.

North Africa: Dual heritage

Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt: the digital infrastructure bears the traces of two spheres of influence — the francophone west (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria) with French telecommunications companies (Orange, SFR subsidiaries) and US software on top, the Arabic-anglophone east (Egypt) with a stronger US orientation.

Cloud infrastructure? Almost exclusively US hyperscalers. Local payment systems exist (Egypt’s Meeza, Morocco’s CMI) but cover only part of the market. The debate about digital sovereignty takes place at government level but has virtually no operational consequences.

Levant and Iraq: Fragmented infrastructure

Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria: fragmented political conditions are mirrored in fragmented digital infrastructure. In Jordan, the US stack dominates. In Lebanon, infrastructure has partially collapsed. In Iraq, US technology coexists with Iranian influence on telecommunications.

Iran as a special case: Under comprehensive US sanctions for decades. No access to Google services, Apple features, AWS, Azure. Out of necessity, Iran has developed its own alternatives — the Shetab payment system, the Soroush messaging app, local cloud services. Functional, but under state control and without connection to the global market. Another example of forced decoupling shifting dependency rather than resolving it.

Sub-Saharan Africa

East Africa: Mobile-first

Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda: Africa has leapfrogged an entire technology generation. Instead of desktop PCs and bank branches: smartphones and mobile money.

Payments: M-Pesa is the continent’s success story. Over 50 million active users in East Africa. Transfers, bills, microloans — all via SMS, without a bank account. M-Pesa has done more for financial inclusion than any banking strategy.

Infrastructure: This is where it gets complicated. A large share of the telecommunications infrastructure was built by Huawei — mobile networks, fibre-optic lines, data centres. The dependency is not American but Chinese. And it comes with its own conditions: Huawei contracts are often tied to Chinese state loans.

Cloud: Minimal. The hyperscalers operate their African regions in South Africa, but connectivity to the East African market is thin. Local cloud barely exists.

The picture: Mobile payment decoupled, telecom infrastructure Chinese-dependent, cloud infrastructure barely existent. An entirely different dependency structure from Europe or North America.

West Africa: US dependency, local innovation

Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast: Nigeria’s technology startup scene (Lagos as “Silicon Lagoon”) is the most dynamic on the continent. Companies like Flutterwave and Paystack are building payments infrastructure for the continent.

But the base remains US-dominated. Software: Microsoft and Google. Cloud: AWS (where available). Communication: WhatsApp.

Key point: In West Africa as in East Africa, the greatest local innovation lies in payments — the area where dependency is felt most directly. The deeper layers (cloud, operating systems) remain untouched.

Southern Africa: The continent’s most developed market

South Africa is Africa’s most technologically mature market — and correspondingly the most deeply integrated into the US stack. Corporate infrastructure on Microsoft and AWS. Payments on Visa/Mastercard. The government has a POPIA (data protection law) modelled on the GDPR, but no sovereignty strategy for the infrastructure itself.

South Africa hosts cloud regions from Azure (since 2019), AWS (since 2020) and GCP (since 2024). This makes South Africa the cloud gateway for all of Africa — and deepens the dependency at the same time.

Oceania

Australia and New Zealand: Five Eyes, full dependency

Australia and New Zealand, as Five Eyes members, are closely linked to the United States through intelligence cooperation. The digital infrastructure reflects this: complete US tech dependency, no meaningful sovereignty debate, no local alternatives.

AWS operates a cloud region in Sydney. Microsoft and Google dominate enterprise and education. Payments run on Visa/Mastercard (Australia additionally has eftpos for local debit cards).

Key point: Australia’s dependency is politically deliberate. The close alliance with the United States makes decoupling not just unnecessary but undesirable. As long as the geopolitical situation remains stable, it works. If not, there is no plan B.

Pacific Islands: Infrastructure as geopolitics

For the Pacific island states — Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Papua New Guinea — digital infrastructure is a geopolitical question. China and the United States compete over submarine cables, mobile networks and data centres. Whoever lays the cables controls the connectivity. For these countries, the issue is not cloud sovereignty — it is connection to the internet at all.

The pattern

Across all continents and cultural spheres, a uniform pattern emerges:

The upper layers are decoupled first. Payments is the area where local alternatives exist most frequently — UPI (India), PIX (Brazil), M-Pesa (East Africa), Mir (Russia), mada (Saudi Arabia). The reason: payments is where dependency is felt most directly and where state regulation takes effect fastest.

The lower layers remain dependent. Cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP), operating systems (Windows, macOS/iOS) and productivity software (Microsoft 365) are the layers that are hardest to replace. Only China has built a complete alternative stack here — at the price of a closed system.

Forced decoupling shifts the dependency, it does not resolve it. Russia, Iran, China — in all three cases, decoupling from US technology has not led to independence but to a new dependency: on the state itself. Replacing US concentration with state concentration does not solve the problem — it politicises it.

The exception is India. UPI, RuPay, Aadhaar demonstrate that decoupling on open infrastructure is possible — without a closed system, without state control in the Chinese sense. India is the only case in which sovereign infrastructure has been built on open standards while remaining integrated into the global market.

Southeast Asia and Africa face a dual dependency. Those who break away from US technology do not land in independence but with Chinese infrastructure. The choice between two dependencies is not sovereignty.

The question is the same everywhere. Whether in São Paulo, Lagos, Jakarta or Tallinn — the question every business and every government must ask is: who controls the infrastructure my operations run on? And what happens if that control is used against my interests?

The answer is never: replace this technology with that one. The answer is: treat dependency on a single provider, a single jurisdiction, a single supply chain for what it is — a risk. And manage that risk before it becomes acute.

Sources

Topic overview: Digital Sovereignty