Transcript

More and more of the world economy is going digital. Whether it's buying plane tickets or applying for credit card loans or looking up healthcare prescriptions, the world is shifting toward a more data-driven and more digital economy.

Today, US & Chinese companies account for 90% of tech market cap. But there remains a huge question – will the rollout of digital services across the developing world be a “colonial” economy run by global multinationals from the US and China, or will it be more local?

We think it is likely to be increasingly less centralized and more distributed. Though we still believe that US and Chinese technology companies will benefit from the digitization of emerging and frontier markets, we think local companies will benefit too.

In daily headlines, we see momentum building for “digital economic nationalism” where local entrepreneurs and governments want greater control over their digital assets.

We define this concept as Digital Decolonization, or DigDec – a process by which entrepreneurs, companies, governments and consumers in developing markets reclaim their digital economies and ecosystems from global multinationals, and develop indigenous solutions for local problems.

We believe this is a global movement with ramifications for technology, for e-commerce, for financial services, for healthcare, for electric power, for infrastructure and for so many other sectors.

Homegrown champions, with help from regulators and political leaders, are helping to build value and wealth in their societies. Homegrown champions are improving local customer experience by creating products and services that appeal to local tastes and customs. And homegrown champions are leapfrogging multinationals by adapting and improving on business models pioneered in the developed world.

We believe DigDec is one of the most important developments in globalization at this point in history. Find out more by listening to David Halpert, the founder of Prince Street Capital Management and a champion of the DigDec thesis, on A Better Mousetrap podcast on Spotify.