The Caribbean voice matters

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Dennis Zulu’s commentary of April 19, ‘Governing artificial intelligence: Why Jamaica’s voice matters in a digital age’, makes a case the region urgently needs to hear. His core argument is sound: Caribbean governments cannot be passive recipients of AI governance norms written in other capitals and corporate headquarters. His article leaves open the harder question of what currently stands between the Caribbean and the active participation for which he calls.

The region has already identified part of the answer. The 49th CARICOM Summit in Montego Bay in July 2025 produced two headline commitments on digital governance: a regional framework for digital safety legislation and a content verification mechanism for the Community. Both were assigned to technical committees. Nine months have passed. No verification system launched, no regional framework entered into force, and individual governments slipped back into separate national responses to platform harms.

Events since then have shown what that absence costs. In March 2026, Prime Minister Philip Davis convened Bahamian creators at Baha Mar to address platform monetisation exclusion. The Bahamas does not appear on the eligibility lists for earning programmes on YouTube, Meta, or TikTok. Davis proposed that government agencies commission content from local creators. The platforms were not at the conference, and their eligibility lists did not change.

Days later in Barbados, Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced that regulation of social media and artificial intelligence is coming. She did not specify what is being regulated, which harms are in scope, or what instruments she intends to use. The announcement was genuine. The framework behind it has not been made public.

The Caribbean cannot negotiate meaningful terms with AI companies while it lacks the collective architecture to negotiate meaningful terms with the platforms that already train, deploy, and profit from AI systems using regional data and markets. Zulu is correct that Caribbean voice in these conversations matters. The region’s record since Montego Bay points towards the work that gives that voice real weight, through institutions that turn communiqués into leverage.

C.M. HUTCHINSON