Caribbean launches regional AI framework to guide digital future

The Caribbean has launched its first re­gion­al frame­work for ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI), with lead­ers call­ing for greater co­op­er­a­tion to en­sure the re­gion be­comes a cre­ator, rather than sim­ply a con­sumer, of AI tech­nolo­gies.

The Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU) of­fi­cial­ly launched the Caribbean AI Task Force Fi­nal Re­port dur­ing the in­au­gur­al Caribbean Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Fo­rum, held joint­ly with The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI) at the Uni­ver­si­ty Inn and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in St. Au­gus­tine from Ju­ly 23 to 24.

The re­port, de­vel­oped by the 36-mem­ber Caribbean AI Task Force over the past year, out­lines sev­en strate­gic rec­om­men­da­tions cov­er­ing AI gov­er­nance, dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion, skills de­vel­op­ment, cli­mate re­silience, pub­lic sec­tor in­no­va­tion and a uni­fied Caribbean voice in glob­al AI gov­er­nance.

Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor of The UWI, San­drea May­nard, said the fo­rum re­flect­ed the re­gion's recog­ni­tion that AI re­quires a co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach in­volv­ing gov­ern­ments, acad­e­mia and the pri­vate sec­tor.

May­nard said The UWI re­mained com­mit­ted to ad­vanc­ing re­search, in­no­va­tion and ev­i­dence-based poli­cies that would sup­port an eth­i­cal, hu­man-cen­tred ap­proach to AI de­vel­op­ment across the Caribbean.

Chair of the Caribbean AI Task Force and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of The UWI St. Au­gus­tine's Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence In­no­va­tion Cen­tre, Dr. Craig Ram­lal, warned that Caribbean coun­tries act­ing in­de­pen­dent­ly lacked the scale need­ed to com­pete glob­al­ly.

Ram­lal said frag­ment­ed gov­er­nance, lim­it­ed in­vest­ment, brain drain and the short­age of in­dige­nous AI en­ter­pris­es placed the re­gion at a dis­ad­van­tage, adding that re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion was the min­i­mum vi­able scale for suc­cess.

De­liv­er­ing the keynote ad­dress, found­ing mem­ber of World Dig­i­tal Gov­er­nance, Graeme Thom­son, de­scribed the re­port as a mile­stone in the Caribbean's dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

Thom­son said the re­gion should be­come "rule mak­ers, not rule tak­ers," while urg­ing Caribbean gov­ern­ments to close what the re­port iden­ti­fied as a co­or­di­na­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion gap.

Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal of The UWI, St. Au­gus­tine, Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, said the fo­rum rep­re­sent­ed more than a tech­nol­o­gy con­fer­ence, de­scrib­ing it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Caribbean to shape the de­vel­op­ment and gov­er­nance of AI ac­cord­ing to its own pri­or­i­ties.

The Caribbean AI Task Force was es­tab­lished in Oc­to­ber 2025 fol­low­ing a res­o­lu­tion by Caribbean ICT min­is­ters. Its work was sup­port­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Union and the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at, with or­gan­is­ers ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that the frame­work will guide a more co­or­di­nat­ed re­gion­al ap­proach to AI gov­er­nance and in­no­va­tion.