For decades, many emerging markets built financial systems around infrastructure, currencies and institutions designed elsewhere. That pattern is changing. Kenya put money on basic mobile phones and changed how millions transact. India built public digital infrastructure at national scale. Brazil's Pix transformed instant payments. Cambodia has built interoperable payment rails around its own currency and connected them across borders. These examples differ in model, scale and history, but they point to the same shift: capabilities once treated as imported infrastructure can increasingly be built, governed and adapted closer to home. The address asks what makes that transition possible, where national control genuinely matters, and when shared or external infrastructure is the smarter choice. The question is no longer whether emerging markets can build differently, but what they must control in order to choose how they connect.