Whose cloud is Pakistan on?

As Pakistan continues its digital transformation, a major question arises: how much control does the country have over the technology, infrastructure and data that shape its future?

This spans sectors such as digital banking, eCommerce, artificial intelligence and government services. Technology is needed for economic growth across sectors. However, adopting digital solutions doesn’t give a country the capacity to control, maintain or protect its citizens.

For this reason, digital sovereignty becomes important. For instance, the State Digital Sovereignty Index 2026, developed by the Center for Global IT Cooperation, provides an appropriate framework for examining how countries manage their digital capabilities and dependencies. It assesses different sectors, including infrastructure and connectivity, technological resources, personnel and skills, domestic digital products and services, and institutions and crisis management.

The State Digital Sovereignty Index 2026 provides an opportunity to assess digital progress beyond internet access and technological adoption. Even with that in mind, questions remain about how much Pakistan can assess its essential digital systems, protect its interests and make independent decisions.

Digital sovereignty is a country’s ability to govern its digital environment. This entails protecting its interests while also having control over technology and systems. All in all, it just doesn’t mean developing systems locally and not engaging international providers. No, it still requires relying on global supply chains for software, equipment, and partners in international research. It features four dimensions: data governance, infrastructure, technological skills, and cybersecurity, which we will cover below.

Digital development must be accompanied by risk management, strong response to disruption and local solution development. Critical systems can easily become vulnerable if they rely on a few external providers or receive minimal maintenance.

In Pakistan, digital sovereignty is closely aligned with national security, economic survival and state control over the digital ecosystem. To achieve digital sovereignty in Pakistan, the country must shift away from heavy reliance on Western or Chinese tech monopolies and gain more domestic control over the digital ecosystem. Previously, Pakistan’s state data relied on Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.

Pakistan is advancing the National Cloud Policy, with examples including building a decentralised Pakistan Subnet using Swiss blockchain tech. The National Telecommunication Corporation is also shifting state entities to locally maintained directory services. Additionally, under the Islamabad Artificial Intelligence Declaration, Pakistan plans to invest $1 billion in localised AI, training models natively on Urdu text and local cultural datasets to reduce algorithmic bias.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication reported an improvement in the country’s ICT Development Index score in 2026, reflecting advances in digital connectivity. The State Digital Sovereignty Index has five dimensions that help identify whether a country has the infrastructure, expertise, domestic solutions, and institutional arrangements to sustain its digital development. Consider Pakistan’s exact position in the 2026 index alongside its scores across these dimensions. The ranking alone is not enough to explain Pakistan’s progress.

The ICT Development Index shows that Pakistan has a score of 67.7 per cent in 2026, up from 56.4 per cent in 2025; Pakistan moved up by 27 places in the global rankings and has a meaningful connectivity score of 79. This clearly shows how Pakistan is expanding its raw telecom infrastructure, universal network availability, and baseline. Also, in a real sense, Pakistan has suffered massive data leaks where personally identifiable information of millions of citizens was compromised and sold online. Public entities also store data without strict, independent oversight, cybersecurity audits or legal accountability for mishandling. To prevent this, it is important to establish a fully autonomous data protection authority.

There are various ways Pakistan can strengthen its digital capabilities and reduce vulnerabilities to ensure they don’t affect long-term economic development. For starters, data is one of the most valuable resources in the modern economy: it delivers public services, helps businesses understand customers and supports research and development. Implementing digital sovereignty requires clear rules governing how data is collected, stored, accessed, shared and protected.

Implementing this correctly in Pakistan will require strengthening data governance arrangements, clarifying institutional responsibilities, and ensuring the secure handling of sensitive information. Public institutions also need to understand how information is stored, accessed and delivered, even when the specific provider is unavailable.

It also relies on the infrastructure that supports communication, computing, storage and digital services. Pakistan can strengthen this by expanding reliable connectivity, developing domestic hosting capacity, and improving the resilience of critical government systems.

We also need to understand that Pakistan can’t rely solely on local infrastructure and should consider foreign suppliers. With time, Pakistan should be able to stand on its own, have multiple suppliers for different needs, and secure backups. This will help ensure there’s a strong digital infrastructure.

Beyond infrastructure and investment, Pakistan also needs skilled people to deliver lasting digital sovereignty. Skilled people will help operate technological systems. Therefore, Pakistan needs opportunities to build skills at the university level for technology professionals, entrepreneurs, and the digital economy. Achieving digital sovereignty requires more than teaching how to use existing tools; it also requires expertise in cybersecurity, cloud management, AI and advanced research.

Universities and businesses need to identify skill gaps in the job market and implement relevant, practical programmes. Also, when it comes to AI, it’s not a must to develop AI models independently, but instead to build the expertise to evaluate, adapt, and deploy AI systems. Relevant applications also need to be built that suit the Pakistani language, industry, and public service needs. The main aim is to build competitive products and services rather than protecting businesses that cannot deliver value.

Another clear strategy is for Pakistan to establish a clear national baseline. This can also be done by using the State Digital Sovereignty Index alongside other relevant assessments to identify its strengths, weaknesses, and critical dependencies. There is also a need to prioritize critical systems and properly assess vulnerabilities.

Additionally, it is key to strengthen domestic technological capacity, invest in specialised skills, improve governance and accountability, and pursue international partnerships. However, the effectiveness of these measures can be evaluated only through practical indicators.

The writer is the author of ‘Digital Pakistan’ and holds the position of chief digital officer and director at the Centre for Information and Communication Technology at IoBM. He tweets/posts @imranbatada