Caribbean Digital Transformation Project: Closing the Connectivity and Skills Gap in Saint Lucia

In July 2019, Grenada, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines signed the first joint three-country tender of its kind: a US$45 million public-private partnership with Digicel, coordinated by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) and the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL), under the Caribbean Regional Communications Infrastructure Program (CARCIP).

The programme connected more than 500 government buildings and roughly 300 schools with fibre, laid a new submarine cable link between St. Vincent and Grenada, and installed data centres in Grenada and Saint Lucia under a 15-year service agreement. A follow-on World Bank Caribbean Digital Transformation Project, running since 2020, equipped 20 smart classrooms across Saint Lucia's eight educational districts and trained 35 teachers to use them.

By 2020, high-quality, low-cost connectivity reached 53.3% of St. Lucia's population; the follow-on project pushed this past 78% and cut the price of a monthly pre-paid data package from US$3.50 to US$2.23. The smart-classrooms initiative reached over 4,500 primary school students, plus more than 700 additional young people through digital classes and camps. Across the four participating islands, World Bank results reporting documents 68,286 people gaining high-quality internet service, more than 11,000 people completing IT/ITES certifications (with an employment rate of up to 65% among certified graduates and average salary increases of around 19%), contributing to nearly 5,000 new ICT jobs.

Most of the quantified skills and jobs figures are reported at the OECS-regional level rather than broken out per island, and the World Bank's own implementation status reports flag periodic procurement and contracting delays; gains are also concentrated in and around capital regions, with outer and rural districts still catching up on connectivity and digital-skills training access.