The 'digital future', described by EY as one of its megatrends, is upon us and rapidly changing how people live, eat and work.

MENA is not untouched, with one of the most visible effects of this megatrend being the startups proliferating from Morocco to Iraq to Oman.

Wamda compared EY's global digital future results with what's happening in this region, and came up with some surpisingly similar conclusions and some vastly different ones.

For example, local businesses are on par with the global average of not using about 80 percent of the data they generate from everyday activities, but cybercrime here does not take as much of a toll on national GDPs.