The Caribbean Telecommunications Union's AI Task Force filed its Final Report on 23 July 2026 in Port of Spain, and its own executive summary does not soften the finding: AI-native enterprises across the entire Caribbean "number in the single digits." Two sentences later, the 41-page report states, on its own line, "This is a disaster." That is the region's own AI Task Force describing its own industry.
TL;DR
- The CTU Caribbean AI Task Force (CAITF) released its Final Report on 23 and 24 July 2026 at the first Caribbean AI Forum in St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, chaired by Dr Craig Ramlal of UWI's Artificial Intelligence Innovation Centre.
- The report's own words: AI-native enterprises in the Caribbean "number in the single digits," and the region "operates overwhelmingly as a consumer of imported technology rather than a producer of localized innovation." The report calls that "a disaster."
- Jamaica jumped from 122nd to 93rd in the Oxford Insights Government AI Readiness Index 2025, the only CARICOM state in the global top 100 out of 195 countries ranked; the rest of the region sits between 122nd and 189th.
- CARICOM remains the only major regional bloc without a binding, collective AI governance instrument, and as of early 2026 no CARICOM member state has an adopted national AI strategy in force.
- The report's own fix for the innovation gap, a staged research-to-commercialization financing pathway with non-dilutive elements, describes almost exactly the model 14West already runs for Caribbean AI founders.
Why This Report Landed Now
The CTU Caribbean AI Task Force was not a one-off committee. It was established by resolution at the Caribbean Telecommunications Union's 31st General Conference of Ministers with a one-year mandate: produce a harmonised Caribbean AI policy framework and coordinate a Caribbean AI Forum before the mandate closed. It published an interim report in Port of Spain in December 2025, circulated it for regional review through conferences, seminars and stakeholder panels, then folded the feedback into a Final Report that landed on 23 and 24 July 2026, at the first Caribbean AI Forum (CAIF 2026), jointly hosted by the CTU, the University of the West Indies, and UWI's Artificial Intelligence Innovation Centre under the theme "AI for Caribbean Transformation: Governance, Innovation and Resilience for a Shared Digital Future."
More than 35 nominated members sat on the Task Force: government ministries, CARICOM's own secretariat, telecom regulators from Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, IBM's Vice President of AI and Automation, the president of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, and academics from the University of Technology Jamaica and beyond. Dr Craig Ramlal, who also directs UWI's Artificial Intelligence Innovation Centre, chaired the process. That is not a marketing document written by a single vendor with something to sell. It is the closest thing the region has to an official audit of its own AI industry, and it names its own conclusion in plain English rather than softening it into a diplomatic footnote.
The Numbers the Task Force Put in Writing
Start with the headline the report itself leads on. Latin America and the Caribbean generate 6.6% of global GDP but capture only 1.12% of global AI investment, a figure the Task Force draws from ECLAC's Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index (ILIA) 2025. UNCTAD's own projection sets the scale of what that gap is missing: the global AI market is expected to grow from roughly US$189 billion in 2023 to US$4.8 trillion by 2033, a near twenty-five-fold expansion. Set against that trajectory, the report's line that Caribbean "AI-native enterprises number in the single digits" is not a rhetorical flourish. It is the number the region is starting a multi-trillion-dollar market cycle with.
The governance picture is just as stark. CARICOM is, in the Task Force's own words, "the only major regional bloc of comparable standing globally without a binding, collective AI governance instrument." The European Union has an operative AI Act. The African Union runs a Continental AI Strategy. Six Caribbean states, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname, have signed the non-binding Declaración de Santiago, but there is no CARICOM-wide equivalent. As of early 2026, no CARICOM member state had a standalone, adopted national AI strategy in force. Jamaica has published policy direction and completed a UNESCO Readiness Assessment; Trinidad and Tobago created a ministry with an explicit AI portfolio and has a readiness assessment in progress; Antigua and Barbuda completed its readiness assessment with no strategy attached yet. For the other eleven CARICOM states, the report's own table records "none reported" against both columns.
Data protection law, the legal floor any AI governance framework needs to stand on, is similarly uneven. Eleven of 15 CARICOM states have enacted data protection legislation, but the report finds only The Bahamas, Barbados and Jamaica have a modern regime with an active, functioning supervisory authority. Trinidad and Tobago's 2011 Act is "only partially proclaimed," with no functioning regulator. Dominica, Haiti and Montserrat have no national data protection statute at all. Suriname's framework has sat in draft since 2020. A region cannot build a shared data commons, one of the report's own recommendations, on top of a legal foundation this fragmented.
The report also leans on a separate, independently commissioned data point to size the wider startup ecosystem: a December 2025 mapping by Startup Genome, under a facility co-funded by IDB Lab and the European Union, validated 154 technology startups across 15 Caribbean countries and rated every single one of those 15 ecosystems in Startup Genome's earliest "Activation Phase," the classification reserved for markets with limited founder experience and thin support infrastructure. A separate Digicel Business and Symptai Consulting survey of more than 2,500 Caribbean businesses found 60% delayed in their digital-transformation plans, with poorly integrated systems, operational firefighting, and weak senior-level prioritisation cited as the top three barriers, ahead of any simple shortage of technical staff.
What It Means to Be One of the Single Digits
Here is the part of the report that should get a founder's attention more than the governance chapters: the Task Force does not treat the funding gap as unsolvable. Its Pillar 3 recommendation calls for "a staged research-to-commercialization financing pathway, anchored in university-based research institutions," that funds long-cycle fundamental research separately from shorter, milestone-based applied research grants, and that reinvests a published share of any resulting commercial returns back into the pipeline. The report is explicit that this is not a hypothetical ask. It points to Jamaica's BIGEE programme, backed by an initial US$25 million Inter-American Development Bank facility, and to the EU/IDB Lab-financed CARIBEquity blended-finance facility, as proof that catalytic, loss-tolerant capital can already be mobilised at Caribbean scale, without needing the balance sheet of a large economy.
That is a policy document describing, almost feature for feature, the funding model 14West already runs: non-dilutive capital aimed at the earliest, least measurable stage of risk, deployed before a founder has anything a conventional bank or a collateral-based Caribbean lender would touch. The Caribbean Development Bank forecasts regional GDP growth of just 1.1% for 2026 excluding Guyana, a backdrop that makes patient, loss-tolerant capital scarcer still from purely commercial sources. The report's own language for why this matters is blunt: "the resulting policy risk is not that every publicly funded invention will necessarily become foreign-owned, but that research will remain uncommercialized, or that a disproportionate share of its downstream development, intellectual-property value, and economic returns will be captured outside the region."
The institutional anchors the report names are already sitting in the region, waiting for financing architecture to connect them to founders. UWI's Artificial Intelligence Innovation Centre, the University of Trinidad and Tobago, the University of Guyana, Anton de Kom University of Suriname, and the University of Technology in Jamaica all appear in the report as existing research capacity. What is missing, in the Task Force's own framing, is not talent or ideas. It is "the financing architecture needed to convert that starting point into a functioning pipeline." That is the gap 14West's grant fund, and parallel work from the Caribbean AI Association tracking governance readiness across the islands, are built to sit inside. It is also the same gap StarApple AI has been working from the demand side since 2018, when it became the first company built in the Caribbean with artificial intelligence as its core business, years before "AI-native" was a category a regional task force needed to count.
Practical Takeaways for Founders and Investors
Read the report as a funder's checklist, not a policy curiosity. Pillar 3's recommendation lays out, almost line by line, the criteria a founder should expect an IDB Lab-adjacent facility, a CDB-backed instrument, or 14West's own grant process to score against: milestone-based structure, a published path to follow-on capital, and a plan for what commercial returns fund next. Build your pitch to answer those criteria before an investor asks.
Treat governance readiness as a sales asset, not a compliance chore. With only three CARICOM states running a modern data protection regime and no bloc-wide AI framework yet in force, a founder who can show a buyer, especially a government buyer, exactly where their data sits and how it is governed has an argument almost no competitor selling a foreign off-the-shelf tool can match.
Go where the readiness gap is narrowing, not just where the market is largest. Jamaica's jump from 122nd to 93rd in the Oxford Insights index did not happen by accident; it tracks directly with the country moving from task-force talk to published policy. A founder targeting public-sector buyers should watch which CARICOM states move next on their own AI strategy, since procurement tends to follow policy by a matter of months, not years.
Do not wait for the harmonised framework to arrive before you build. The Task Force is explicit that implementation, not more strategy, is now the region's priority. A founder with a working, narrow, Caribbean-specific AI product does not need CARICOM's governance architecture to be finished. They need capital that does not require it to be finished either, which is exactly what 14West's non-dilutive grant fund is built to provide, right now, not on a multi-year roadmap.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did the Caribbean AI Task Force's Final Report say about AI startups in the region?
The Final Report's executive framing states plainly that "AI-native enterprises number in the single digits" across the entire Caribbean sub-region, and that the region "operates overwhelmingly as a consumer of imported technology rather than a producer of localized innovation." The report follows that finding with a one-line paragraph of its own: "This is a disaster."
When and where was the CAITF Final Report launched?
The Caribbean AI Task Force released its Final Report, titled "Toward Harmonized AI Policies and Recommendations for the Caribbean," on 23 and 24 July 2026 at the first Caribbean AI Forum (CAIF 2026) in St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, jointly hosted by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, the University of the West Indies, and UWI's Artificial Intelligence Innovation Centre.
Who chairs the CTU Caribbean AI Task Force?
Dr Craig Ramlal, Executive Director of UWI's Artificial Intelligence Innovation Centre, chairs the Task Force, and Shernon Osepa of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union coordinates the group's work. More than 35 members drawn from Caribbean governments, regional institutions, academia, civil society and the private sector contributed to the report.
Why does CARICOM still lack a region-wide AI governance framework?
The report identifies CARICOM as the only major regional bloc of comparable standing without a binding, collective AI governance instrument, unlike the European Union's AI Act or the African Union's Continental AI Strategy. Six Caribbean states, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Suriname, have signed the non-binding Declaración de Santiago, but no CARICOM-wide instrument exists, and as of early 2026 no CARICOM member state has a standalone, adopted national AI strategy in force.
How does Jamaica's AI readiness ranking compare to the rest of the Caribbean?
In the Oxford Insights Government AI Readiness Index 2025, which assessed 195 countries, Jamaica rose from 122nd place in 2024 to 93rd in 2025, the only CARICOM member state to break into the global top 100. The rest of the region ranges from Trinidad and Tobago at 122nd down to Haiti at 189th, with no other CARICOM state cracking the top 100.
What did the Startup Genome CARIBEquity assessment find about Caribbean tech startups?
The CAITF Final Report cites a December 2025 assessment by Startup Genome, commissioned under a facility co-funded by IDB Lab and the European Union, which mapped 154 validated technology startups across 15 Caribbean countries and placed every one of those 15 ecosystems in Startup Genome's earliest "Activation Phase," its classification for markets with limited startup experience, modest output, and thin support infrastructure.
What funding mechanism does the report recommend to fix the research-to-commercialization gap?
Recommendation 3(e) calls for a staged research-to-commercialization financing pathway, anchored in university-based research institutions, that funds multi-year fundamental research separately from shorter-cycle, milestone-based applied research grants, and that channels a published share of resulting commercial returns back into further research funding. It points to Jamaica's BIGEE programme, backed by an initial US$25 million Inter-American Development Bank facility, as proof this is achievable at Caribbean scale.
Is Caribbean data protection law ready to support a regional AI framework?
Not yet, according to the report. Eleven of 15 CARICOM member states have enacted data protection legislation, but only The Bahamas, Barbados and Jamaica have functioning modern regimes with an active supervisory authority. Dominica, Haiti and Montserrat have no national data protection statute at all, and Suriname's framework remains in draft form, which the report says undermines any assumption of a common baseline for regional data sharing.
How can a Caribbean AI founder apply for funding from 14West?
14West is the Caribbean's first AI startup accelerator, deploying non-dilutive grant capital to early-stage Caribbean AI founders with no equity taken. Founders can apply directly.
The Task Force's mandate has now formally closed, but its report explicitly frames itself as a starting line rather than a finish: implementation, it says, "must now become the region's priority." A count of AI-native companies that fits on one hand is not a permanent condition. It is a snapshot taken in July 2026, of a region that finally wrote its own number down instead of guessing at it. The next count, whenever the Task Force or a successor body takes it, will move only as fast as the founders building toward it and the capital willing to fund them before a bank or a venture fund elsewhere in the world would. That is the work in front of the region now, not the report.
About the Author: Adrian Dunkley
Adrian Dunkley is the founder of 14West, the Caribbean's first AI startup accelerator and grant fund. In 2018, he founded StarApple AI in Jamaica, the first dedicated artificial intelligence company built in the Caribbean, and he is widely regarded as the region's leading AI voice, serving as President of the Caribbean AI Association and a member of Jamaica's National AI Task Force. Applications for 14West's next cohort are open now, at 14westai.com/apply.html, and the fund takes no equity.
Tags: Caribbean AI Task Force, CAITF, CTU, Caribbean AI Forum, CARICOM AI policy, Caribbean AI startups, 14West