Image: Best Nepal
IF NEPAL’S DIGITAL economy were a skyscraper, it would be a tall and shiny building with almost no one inside. The elevators work, the electrical wires are safe and the pipes are top-notch. But hardly any businesses have set up shop there and the lights in the stairs are still off. Nepal is determined to make the 2020s its “Information Technology Decade”, but the difference between its big plans and the real situation is embarrassing.
The country has built an impressive-looking front. Its internet system inside the country, once slowed down by its mountains and politics, now matches that of much richer neighbors. Fast internet stretches across thousands of kilometers of rocky land. Mobile phone service reaches 88% of people. A key national internet hub has more members than most in South Asia, and data centers are set up across the country like towers waiting for a signal. On paper the government has done what the engineers asked.
But moving a country online isn’t only about engineering. It is about people and businesses using it. And here Nepal’s base is weak. Fewer than four out of ten homes are online. Only 15% of people own a computer. Among official businesses, fast internet is almost everywhere, but working websites are not. Just over half of the firms with the internet even try to use it to buy or sell things. Less than 10% pay their suppliers using online transfers. These numbers don’t show a country about to have a digital revolution. They show a country stuck at the start, like a computer screen asking for a password.
The IT field makes up 1.7% of the economy, even though the country wants it to be 5% by 2030. That is because the connection has grown but know-how has not. Companies that do spend money on digital tools see good payoffs: a small investment can produce a big jump in how much they get done. Shops with websites do better than shops without. Online sales jumped for businesses that started during the pandemic. But these are the rare cases rather than the normal pattern. Too many businesses see the internet like water or electricity—something they have, not a place to do business. They are online in name only.
The main reason for that is the usual one: government red tape. Nepal’s plans for its digital future are full of big ideas but short on getting things done. The 80 different projects in the “Digital Nepal Framework” are like a restaurant menu with no kitchen to cook the food. Key projects—like online signatures, 5G mobile networks as well as expanding internet cables to villages—are always stuck in testing mode. A fund meant to help pay for internet in hard-to-reach areas has become a place where legal fights and manager indecision go to sit. At the same time, rules that slow things down and messy government buying processes suck the energy out of even the smartest plans.
The government, having built the tower, doesn’t seem sure how to fill it. Programs to teach people digital skills are scattered and not enough. Phones and computers are still too expensive for many families. A lack of skilled workers holds companies back as much as a lack of money does. The government and businesses should be working together to make using technology easier, but rather there’s a kind of standstill: a reluctance to admit that building the physical parts is only half the job.
Nepal isn’t the only country in this situation. Many growing economies have found that going digital doesn’t follow the simple, straight path of a map of internet cables. It needs other layers: trust in institutions, clear rules, easy movement of money and a culture ready for change. Without those, even the best networks won’t carry much that’s useful. The old-fashioned ways of doing things, used by officials as well as business owners, still run most of the daily buying and selling in Nepal.
The danger is not that everything will fall apart, but that there will be a show without real results. A country can look connected while actually being disconnected: talking about progress without actually understanding it or using it. Government offices are very good at this show: making big plans, holding meetings, writing reports. But being connected, like having electricity, only matters when the light actually stays on.
To avoid that future, Nepal needs to rethink what success in its IT decade really means. It’s not about more cables or more data centers or even more phone apps. It’s about how people act. When a village group starts selling turmeric online or a clothing company starts using online systems to track its stock, that’s when digital change has happened. The infrastructure is just the stage. The economy still has to write the play.
The government can give a push. It can help pay for devices. It can create standard training programs. It can demand that different computer systems work together. But the most important fix is to the bureaucracy itself: clear out the slow, sticky procedures that choke getting anything done. Government institutions need to stop just looking at the pipes they installed and actually start turning on the water.
Nepal’s digital future will arrive when its companies, schools, hospitals and people start acting like the digital world is a normal, necessary part of life. Unless its leaders find the determination to turn infrastructure into actual use, and big dreams into real action, the digital decade won’t end with a bang, but with a hollow sound—bouncing around inside a tall, shiny tower that was never really open for business. ■
