GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

As T&T con­fronts de­clin­ing nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and grow­ing con­cerns about the long-term fu­ture of its en­er­gy sec­tor, Caribbean AI Agency chief cre­ative of­fi­cer An­dre Samuel is ad­vo­cat­ing for the de­vel­op­ment of large-scale da­ta cen­tres as a new pil­lar of eco­nom­ic growth.

His com­ments come amid on­go­ing na­tion­al de­bate sur­round­ing the pro­posed Trinidad AI da­ta cen­tre projects, which sup­port­ers say could po­si­tion T&T as a re­gion­al tech­nol­o­gy hub ca­pa­ble of at­tract­ing glob­al tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies while cre­at­ing jobs and gen­er­at­ing new rev­enue streams for the econ­o­my.

Pro­po­nents have ar­gued that the coun­try’s en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, rel­a­tive­ly low elec­tric­i­ty costs and strate­gic lo­ca­tion make it an at­trac­tive des­ti­na­tion for da­ta cen­tre in­vest­ment.

Samuel, how­ev­er, be­lieves the coun­try is unique­ly po­si­tioned to at­tract in­vest­ment from glob­al tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies and could lever­age its ex­ist­ing en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture to de­vel­op a thriv­ing dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

Speak­ing about his pro­fes­sion­al back­ground, Samuel said his ex­pe­ri­ence spans fi­nance, hu­man re­sources, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and in­ter­na­tion­al re­cruit­ment, giv­ing him a broad un­der­stand­ing of how tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven in­dus­tries op­er­ate.

“While do­ing fi­nan­cial ad­vis­ing, I had to learn HR and IT,” he told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian adding,”I’ve been more or less in HR and IT for the past 16 or 17 years, so I have a full un­der­stand­ing of how the world of in­ter­net and tech­nol­o­gy works.”

For the past three years, Samuel has al­so been in­volved in help­ing re­cruit Caribbean work­ers for op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the Unit­ed King­dom’s Na­tion­al Health Ser­vice, through an on­line re­cruit­ment com­pa­ny known as UK Jobs.

That ex­pe­ri­ence, he said, ex­posed him to glob­al labour trends and the grow­ing de­mand for tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven so­lu­tions across in­dus­tries.

Build­ing a Caribbean AI vi­sion

Samuel shared that one of the key ar­eas of the Caribbean AI Agency, a ven­ture es­tab­lished late last year, is to at­tract in­vest­ment from ma­jor glob­al tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing what are com­mon­ly re­ferred to as “hy­per­scalers” such as Ama­zon, Mi­crosoft and Google.

“I am re­spon­si­ble for mar­ket­ing the idea and mak­ing con­tacts. We are try­ing to bring these hy­per­scaler com­pa­nies to Trinidad to in­vest in the new ven­tures that the Caribbean is of­fer­ing,” he said.

The Caribbean AI Agency, a re­gion­al net­work con­nect­ing gov­ern­ments, in­vestors and tech­nol­o­gists, aims to po­si­tion T&T and the wider Caribbean at the cen­tre of the glob­al con­ver­sa­tion on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, with a man­date built on en­sur­ing the re­gion’s AI fu­ture is both pros­per­ous and re­spon­si­bly gov­erned.

The agency is based in San­ta Cruz, with a mail­ing ad­dress in Wright­son Road.

Look­ing be­yond oil and gas

Cen­tral to Samuel’s ar­gu­ment is the re­al­i­ty that T&T’s tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy re­sources are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly de­plet­ed.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing re­cent dis­cov­er­ies and on­go­ing ex­plo­ration ef­forts, he said the coun­try’s econ­o­my must be­gin prepar­ing for a fu­ture in which oil and gas are no longer the dom­i­nant source of na­tion­al in­come.

“The oil is lit­er­al­ly dry­ing up,” Samuel said.

He point­ed to re­duced nat­ur­al gas avail­abil­i­ty and chal­lenges faced by the en­er­gy sec­tor as ev­i­dence that eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly ur­gent.

“It could boost our gross do­mes­tic prod­uct, pulling in the slack from where the en­er­gy sec­tor is de­plet­ing,” he said.

Samuel com­pared the op­por­tu­ni­ty to the coun­try’s his­tor­i­cal re­la­tion­ship with oil and gas, where in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion, gen­er­at­ing rev­enues for the state through tax­es, roy­al­ties and re­lat­ed busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty.

He be­lieves a sim­i­lar mod­el could emerge with tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies es­tab­lish­ing re­gion­al op­er­a­tions in T&T.

Why T&T?

Samuel ar­gues that Trinidad pos­sess­es sev­er­al com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages com­pared with oth­er Caribbean na­tions.

Among these ad­van­tages are its lo­ca­tion out­side the main hur­ri­cane belt, its es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al in­fra­struc­ture and its rel­a­tive­ly low elec­tric­i­ty costs.

He de­scribed the coun­try as prime re­al es­tate for da­ta cen­tre de­vel­op­ment.

With ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, cloud com­put­ing and dig­i­tal ser­vices be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant, he be­lieves de­mand for da­ta stor­age and pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties would con­tin­ue grow­ing around the world.

As a re­sult, coun­tries ca­pa­ble of host­ing these fa­cil­i­ties stand to ben­e­fit from in­creased for­eign in­vest­ment and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Samuel said multi­na­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy firms are con­stant­ly seek­ing lo­ca­tions where they could es­tab­lish new fa­cil­i­ties and ex­pand op­er­a­tions.

He be­lieves Trinidad should ac­tive­ly po­si­tion it­self to cap­ture a por­tion of that in­vest­ment.

To sup­port his ar­gu­ment, Samuel point­ed to ex­am­ples from oth­er de­vel­op­ing economies that have ex­pand­ed their dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture.

He said coun­tries such as Brazil and In­dia have ex­pe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic gains through in­vest­ments in da­ta cen­tre de­vel­op­ment and as­so­ci­at­ed tech­nol­o­gy in­dus­tries.

“In­dia shows a dif­fer­ent mod­el — one dri­ven less by tax in­cen­tives and more by sheer dig­i­tal de­mand. The mar­ket is pro­ject­ed to rough­ly dou­ble from about US$10 bil­lion in 2025 to over US$21 bil­lion by 2031, with cu­mu­la­tive in­vest­ment com­mit­ments al­ready ex­ceed­ing US$126 bil­lion and pos­si­bly cross­ing US$180 bil­lion in 2026 alone,” he added.

He al­so cit­ed Colom­bia as an ex­am­ple of a coun­try whose econ­o­my has ben­e­fit­ted from at­tract­ing tech­nol­o­gy-based in­vest­ment.

“Colom­bia is the clos­est ana­logue in scale to T&T, and ar­guably the most in­struc­tive com­par­i­son. Its da­ta cen­tre mar­ket was val­ued at rough­ly US$450 mil­lion in 2025, pro­ject­ed to reach US$1.16 to US1.44 bil­lion by 2030–31 — a mod­est ab­solute size, but a strik­ing 17–21 per cent an­nu­al growth rate. Bo­go­ta has be­come the hub through a de­lib­er­ate com­bi­na­tion of Free Trade Zone in­cen­tives, sim­pli­fied per­mit­ting and re­new­able en­er­gy com­mit­ments (tar­get­ing 70 per cent re­new­ables by 2030),” he said.

Samuel be­lieves Trinidad could repli­cate as­pects of those suc­cess­es by de­vel­op­ing a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy cen­tred on dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, in­vest­ment in­cen­tives and work­force de­vel­op­ment.

Job Cre­ation Po­ten­tial

One of Samuel’s strongest ar­gu­ments for da­ta cen­tre in­vest­ment re­volves around em­ploy­ment.

He not­ed that while the en­er­gy sec­tor has his­tor­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed sub­stan­tial rev­enues, on­ly a rel­a­tive­ly small per­cent­age of the work­force has been di­rect­ly em­ployed with­in the in­dus­try.

By con­trast, he be­lieves da­ta cen­tres could cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties across mul­ti­ple sec­tors.

The con­struc­tion phase alone could gen­er­ate thou­sands of jobs, he said.

Samuel ref­er­enced pro­pos­als in­volv­ing large-scale fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing so-called K4 da­ta cen­tres, which could re­quire ex­ten­sive con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty over sev­er­al years adding, “We will see thou­sands of per­sons be­ing hired,” he said.

Be­yond con­struc­tion, he said long-term em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties would emerge in en­gi­neer­ing, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, main­te­nance, op­er­a­tions and da­ta man­age­ment.

Im­por­tant­ly, Samuel be­lieves the coun­try has time to pre­pare its work­force for these op­por­tu­ni­ties.

He en­cour­aged greater em­pha­sis on sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and tech­ni­cal ed­u­ca­tion so that younger gen­er­a­tions could ac­quire the skills need­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the dig­i­tal econ­o­my. These skills in­clude elec­tri­cal in­stal­la­tion and jour­ney­man train­ing: a di­rect route in­to da­ta cen­tre elec­tri­cian and crit­i­cal pow­er tech­ni­cian roles; HVAC and re­frig­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy and in­dus­tri­al and me­chan­i­cal trades: mill­wrights, plumbers and struc­tur­al tech­ni­cians all trans­fer well in­to da­ta cen­tre work

Re­spond­ing to In­fra­struc­ture Con­cerns

De­spite the eco­nom­ic promise, pro­pos­als for da­ta cen­tre de­vel­op­ment have raised con­cerns about po­ten­tial pres­sure on T&T’s elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter sup­plies.

Samuel ac­knowl­edged these con­cerns but ar­gued that much of the crit­i­cism is based on out­dat­ed per­cep­tions of how da­ta cen­tres op­er­ate.

He said mod­ern fa­cil­i­ties are far more ef­fi­cient than ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions of da­ta cen­tres built decades ago.

He ex­plained that while cool­ing sys­tems re­quire wa­ter, many con­tem­po­rary fa­cil­i­ties use closed-loop re­cy­cling sys­tems that re­peat­ed­ly reuse the same wa­ter rather than con­stant­ly draw­ing new sup­plies.

“They re­cy­cle wa­ter. It’s not like they are go­ing to be us­ing wa­ter like our house or com­pa­ny us­es wa­ter,” said Samuel, com­par­ing the process to a ve­hi­cle cool­ing sys­tem, where wa­ter cir­cu­lates con­tin­u­ous­ly to reg­u­late tem­per­a­tures.

He al­so point­ed to plans in­volv­ing de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter and man-made wa­ter stor­age sys­tems that could sup­port cool­ing op­er­a­tions with­out plac­ing ex­ces­sive pres­sure on do­mes­tic sup­plies.

En­er­gy Still an Ad­van­tage

On elec­tric­i­ty de­mand, Samuel ar­gued that Trinidad re­mains well-po­si­tioned be­cause of its ex­ist­ing en­er­gy re­sources and gen­er­a­tion in­fra­struc­ture.

He not­ed that the coun­try’s elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem is fu­elled pri­mar­i­ly by nat­ur­al gas, help­ing to keep pow­er costs rel­a­tive­ly low com­pared with many oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions.

At the same time, he said new­er da­ta cen­tre de­signs in­creas­ing­ly in­cor­po­rate re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies.

So­lar pow­er sys­tems, for ex­am­ple, are com­mon­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to mod­ern fa­cil­i­ties to re­duce en­er­gy costs and im­prove sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Samuel said work is on­go­ing to as­sess the in­fra­struc­ture re­quire­ments that would be nec­es­sary to sup­port ma­jor da­ta cen­tre in­vest­ments.

For him, how­ev­er, the broad­er is­sue is eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion.