In Jan­u­ary 2026, Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came one of on­ly eight coun­tries to en­ter in­to a part­ner­ship with Open AI for Ed­u­ca­tion, seek­ing to strength­en and add ca­pac­i­ty to our schools and uni­ver­si­ties. Chat­G­PT can now be de­ployed through­out our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. An en­tire gen­er­a­tion can be AI-lit­er­ate be­fore they en­ter the work force, if ef­fec­tive­ly man­aged.

The rea­son this is good news is that AI is al­ready dri­ving the world econ­o­my but on­ly a hand­ful of coun­tries will have the fi­nan­cial where­with­al and the im­mense amount of en­er­gy re­quired to build an AI-dri­ven econ­o­my. That will re­sult in the mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of a lot of coun­tries. So this coun­try’s em­brace of Ope­nAI is good news.

The oth­er vi­tal part­ner to AI is quan­tum com­put­ing. Again, an even small­er hand­ful of coun­tries may ever be in a lead­er­ship role in this. Notwith­stand­ing an in­evitable di­vide, coun­tries such as T&T must find a way of lever­ag­ing AI for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and to be quan­tum ready in or­der to en­joy a de­sir­able qual­i­ty of life.

This Gov­ern­ment, from the very be­gin­ning, took Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence se­ri­ous­ly by es­tab­lish­ing a min­istry that has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it. Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and AI, Do­minic Smith, ear­li­er this year, at­tend­ed an AI Sum­mit in New Del­hi, the first of its kind in the Glob­al South.

The most pow­er­ful coun­tries in AI and quan­tum com­put­ing are the US and Chi­na, but In­dia, with the youngest pop­u­la­tion of the three, like­ly to be­come the third largest econ­o­my in the world with­in a decade, is lever­ag­ing AI and is fo­cused more on ap­pli­ca­tions val­ue and im­pact, as well as, on South-South co­op­er­a­tion. This coun­try has signed agree­ments with In­dia to ad­vance AI-dri­ven ini­tia­tives that will ad­dress iden­ti­ty, pay­ments, da­ta, ser­vice and gov­er­nance is­sues. T&T has al­so em­braced the UAE to ad­dress dig­i­tal sov­er­eign­ty through de­vel­op­ment of a na­tion­al cloud. Agree­ments with both coun­tries fa­cil­i­tate in­vest­ment by tech firms with high-val­ue jobs.

One of the things about tech­nol­o­gy is that you can for­ev­er be a re­ceiv­er of tech­nolo­gies from else­where, with lim­it­ed flex­i­bil­i­ty or ca­pac­i­ty for cus­tomi­sa­tion. The South-South per­spec­tive is sen­si­tive to this and of­fers greater pos­si­bil­i­ties of en­gag­ing the AI world in a way that does not re­in­force colo­nial habits of prac­tice. Be­ing tied in to “fron­tier mod­els” from Sil­i­con Val­ley or Bei­jing can lead al­most in­evitably to a “brain drain” of da­ta and cap­i­tal.

How do we po­si­tion T&T, as a small coun­try, to be in the AI dance and a leader in it? Some small coun­tries, like Sin­ga­pore and Es­to­nia, are al­ready ahead, but we can leapfrog tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and play a de­ci­sive role re­gion­al­ly and in South-South co­op­er­a­tion. But to do that, we must suc­ceed first, which would then put us in a po­si­tion to share our ex­pe­ri­ence, know-how and ex­per­tise with cred­i­bil­i­ty. For that, we must seize the ben­e­fit of de­sir­able, com­pat­i­ble part­ner­ships.

What we must not do as we de­vel­op this new fron­tier for T&T, is to de­vel­op our AI strat­e­gy and plan in si­los, un­linked and un­in­te­grat­ed, which can on­ly lead to du­pli­ca­tion of ef­fort, lack of syn­er­gy, dis­so­nance and wastage.

We have seen this in agri­cul­ture, where we once had the best School of Trop­i­cal Agri­cul­ture in the world and yet to­day we have one of the high­est food im­port bills per capi­ta. We de­vel­oped an en­er­gy sec­tor with­out ever look­ing deeply enough at the val­ue chain, with­out reap­ing enough ben­e­fits through lo­cal con­tent, and came to con­sid­er trans­fer pric­ing late. Pure­ly par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions and in­ju­di­cious pa­tron­age have robbed us per­sis­tent­ly of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to strate­gi­cal­ly lever­age a tru­ly na­tion­al tal­ent pool. We try to make di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion hap­pen with­out ap­pre­ci­at­ing the cen­tral role of ease of do­ing busi­ness in in­vest­ment, busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness and suc­cess.

So, in this de­sir­able ini­tia­tive to lever­age AI and be­come quan­tum ready, we must look at how pub­lic ser­vice ef­fec­tive­ness, busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness, in­vest­ment flows, re­search-based and ap­pli­ca­tions-dri­ven knowl­edge sys­tems, skills ca­pac­i­ty, cit­i­zen con­ve­nience and ser­vice are all in­te­grat­ed in­to one ded­i­cat­ed, na­tion­al ef­fort. It must be an all-em­brac­ing, in­clu­sive, col­lab­o­ra­tive, na­tion­al, self-de­vel­op­ment ef­fort.

The UWI AI In­no­va­tion Cen­tre can play an im­por­tant role in AI, da­ta gov­er­nance, cus­tomi­sa­tion and rad­i­cal hu­man cap­i­tal reskilling. Part­ner­ships with sup­port­ive coun­tries are vi­tal. Lever­ag­ing skilling and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties abroad is crit­i­cal. Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones to at­tract AI re­search labs and oth­er in­dus­tries which de­mand jobs high­er up the val­ue chain are nec­es­sary. And a quan­tum-safe ar­chi­tec­ture fo­cused on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in our fi­nan­cial and en­er­gy sec­tors, is an ur­gent pri­or­i­ty.