Minister Fitzgerald Calls for Caribbean Digital Sovereignty, Urges Region to “Hold the Keys” to Its Digital Future

NASSAU, The Bahamas - Minister of Economic Affairs Senator the Hon. Jerome Fitzgerald has challenged Caribbean governments, technology providers and regional stakeholders to rethink the region's approach to digital development, warning that connectivity and technology adoption must not come at the expense of ownership, control and national sovereignty.

Minister Fitzgerald delivered the keynote address at the 41st Canto Annual Conference & Trade Exhibition in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, on August 11. The conference was held August 9-12, 2026 under the theme, 'Elevate the Caribbean: From Connectivity to Global Competitiveness.'

His keynote address, "Who Holds the Keys? Digital Colonization and the Caribbean Claim to Sovereignty," examined the growing influence of data, cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence, algorithms and digital platforms on the Caribbean, and questioned whether the region is building genuine digital capability or creating new forms of dependency.

The Minister recalled remarks made by Prime Minister the Hon. Philip Edward Davis at the 40th annual Canto Conference in Nassau the previous year on the issue of digital colonization in the Caribbean.

"Today I want to explore who holds the keys of our digital revolution, who should hold them and what can we do to protect ourselves from the digital colonization he spoke about while preserving our sovereignty," Minister Fitzgerald said.

He cautioned that the Caribbean is entering the digital age through an architecture that risks reproducing aspects of the colonial economic model: "extraction without ownership, participation without power, and dependence presented as development."

Minister Fitzgerald noted that Caribbean people generate data, governments purchase digital systems, consumers pay subscriptions, and Caribbean land and energy may host infrastructure, while intelligence, intellectual property, profits and governing authority associated with those systems can accumulate elsewhere.

"Value flows outward. Rules flow inward," he stated.

Digital Consumption Is Not Digital Sovereignty

Minister Fitzgerald stressed that digital transformation must be measured not simply by connectivity or access to technology, but by the region's ability to understand, govern, control and recover its critical digital assets and systems.

"Digital consumption is not digital sovereignty," he said. "Connectivity is not capability. Hosting is not ownership. And dependence does not become development merely because the dependency is fast."

He defined digital sovereignty as the ability to own, combined with the power to know, choose, refuse and recover information.

Among the questions Caribbean governments must consider, he said, are where critical information resides, who can inspect it, who controls encryption keys, which laws can compel its disclosure, whether systems can be moved if prices increase or providers withdraw, and how quickly essential government functions could be restored following a major disruption such as a hurricane.

"If we cannot audit a critical system, replace its provider and keep essential services running after disruption, then sovereignty exists in our anthem but not in our architecture," Minister Fitzgerald said.

He illustrated the challenge by observing: "We occupy the house. We pay for the house. We may even have built the house. But someone else holds the keys."

Data Centres and Regional Value

Minister Fitzgerald said the issue is particularly evident in discussions surrounding data centres and the concessions and resources that may accompany major technology investments.

He challenged policymakers to consider what capability, ownership, resilience, tax revenue and recurring value will remain in the Caribbean after land, electricity, water, roads and other resources have been provided.

"Should we give the land, provide the power, supply the water, build the road, grant the concessions, and then pay rent to use services generated from our own resources while the knowledge and profits leave our shores?" he asked.

He said the decisions being made today will determine whether the region is pursuing genuine digital transformation or "simply an extraction agreement with a different branding."

Regional Unity as Digital Leverage

Minister Fitzgerald emphasized that the Caribbean's size should not be viewed as its greatest obstacle.

"Being a small state is not the decisive fact. Fragmentation is, and fragmentation is a political choice," he said.

Referencing Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite's description of the Caribbean's historical, cultural and ancestral bond as "The unity is submarine," the Minister drew a parallel between the region's physical geography and its digital interconnectedness.

"Digitally, our traffic moves through the same submarine cables. Our economies run on the same networks. Our vulnerabilities cross borders in milliseconds. A cyberattack does not respect the water between us. Neither does an algorithm."

He argued that regional cooperation can significantly strengthen the Caribbean's negotiating position.

"Alone, each island approaches a platform as a customer. Together, we approach it as a market. Alone, each government bargains for a facility. Together, we can bargain for an ecosystem. Alone, we ask for access. Together, we can require reciprocal agreements."

Four Priorities for Caribbean Digital Sovereignty

Minister Fitzgerald outlined four priorities for strengthening Caribbean digital sovereignty:

First, he called for the establishment of a Caribbean Digital Sovereignty Compact to establish a regional baseline for data-centre incentives, resource obligations, cybersecurity, data protection, government cloud contracts, portability and disaster recovery. Such a framework, he said, should prevent investors from playing one Caribbean country against another for strategic resources.

Second, he proposed a Federated Caribbean Cloud and Compute Network, consisting of resilient nodes distributed across several islands and linked through diverse cables and network hardware, additional renewable energy generation, shared cybersecurity capabilities, and treaty-protected protocols and backups.

"Our risk will be distributed, and our sovereignty should be too," he said.

Third, Minister Fitzgerald called for major technology contracts to be treated as matters with constitutional and sovereignty implications. Public contracts, he said, should require open standards, usable data exports, independent audits, Caribbean-controlled encryption, exit rights and knowledge transfer.

"Public money must purchase public capability," he emphasized.

Finally, he called for Caribbean data to be treated as an economic, cultural and national security asset.

He pointed to health records, agricultural knowledge, speech patterns, music, archives and images, warning that the region's collective knowledge and cultural assets should not simply become proprietary intelligence elsewhere without Caribbean participation in the resulting value chain.

Building Caribbean Artificial Intelligence Capability

The Minister said the issue has become even more urgent with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, questioning whether systems developed elsewhere adequately reflect Caribbean accents, histories, cultures and values.

"We should use these global tools, but we must also build Caribbean datasets, evaluation standards, models, and research institutions," he said. "We must be authors of technology, not merely subjects inside it."

Minister Fitzgerald also highlighted the growing cybersecurity implications of artificial intelligence, noting that the same technologies capable of drafting documents can be used to clone voices, forge official statements, enhance phishing attacks and continuously probe networks for vulnerabilities.

He pointed to ransomware attacks on government systems, telecommunications breaches and leaked citizen data as evidence of the region's exposure.

He called on telecommunications operators and other technology stakeholders to strengthen regional cooperation by pooling threat intelligence, sharing monitoring and response capabilities, establishing common standards for critical infrastructure and deploying artificial intelligence for cybersecurity defence under Caribbean control.

"It is not enough to only ask who holds the keys. We must be able to change the locks," Minister Fitzgerald declared.

Investing in Caribbean People and Institutions

Minister Fitzgerald stressed that digital sovereignty ultimately depends on people and institutions capable of understanding and governing increasingly complex technologies.

He called for investment in engineers, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity specialists, data stewards, lawyers, regulators, economists and public officials capable of interrogating contracts and algorithms and, when necessary, saying "No!"

He also proposed the development of a Caribbean artificial intelligence laboratory, owned by the region and capable of training models using Caribbean languages, archives and history on computing infrastructure under regional control.

"We do not wait for capability before negotiating. Every negotiation must build capability," he said.

Minister Fitzgerald characterized this as the post-colonial approach required for the digital age.

"Post-colonial does not mean anti-foreign. It means anti-subordination. It does not mean rejecting capital. It means disciplining capital toward sustainable development in our national and regional interest."

He added that the region should not close itself off from the world, but should engage internationally "on terms that preserve our ability to choose."

Sovereignty in the Digital Age

Minister Fitzgerald warned that political independence alone does not guarantee sovereignty in a rapidly changing technological environment.

"When we gained political independence, we acquired flags, parliaments, constitutions, and seats among nations. Those achievements were hard fought and profound. But sovereignty is never fixed in the annals of time. Power moves. Each generation must identify where it has moved and build institutions capable of meeting it there."

He said that in the present generation, power is increasingly moving into code, compute, cloud, data, algorithms, standards and infrastructure.

"The next colonial office may have no building in our capital," he warned. "It may exist in a platform's terms of service."

He added that authority could increasingly be exercised through an algorithm that cannot be inspected, a cloud service that cannot be exited, or an account that can be switched off without appeal.

"The decree may come as a software update," he said.

Minister Fitzgerald emphasized that the choice facing the Caribbean is not between isolation and dependency.

"The better course is partnership with agency," he said.

He concluded by reinforcing the importance of regional unity and collective action:

"The truth beneath the water remains; our unity is submarine, our leverage is regional, and our sovereignty must be built together."

World Telecommunication and ICT Policy Forum Coming to Nassau

Minister Fitzgerald noted that the issue of Caribbean digital sovereignty has immediate relevance as Nassau prepares to host the World Telecommunication and ICT Policy Forum from September 1-4, marking the first time the forum will come to the Caribbean.

Calling on governments, telecommunications operators and regulators across the region to participate, he urged the Caribbean to use the opportunity to present a united position to the international community.

"Come to Nassau. Bring your respective governments, your operators, and your regulators, and let the world hear this region answer in one voice," he said.

Minister Fitzgerald closed his keynote remarks by emphasizing that the Caribbean's digital future is no longer a question of whether the region will become digital, but who will control that future.

"The issue before us is no longer whether the Caribbean will become digital. It will. The issue is who, in the digital Caribbean, will hold the keys, and whether the Caribbean truly remains sovereign."

He concluded with a call for immediate action, invoking the "fierce urgency of now" and declaring:

"This is where we are!"