Two Day World Bank Conference Will Focus on Developing the Digital Economy within the Eastern Caribbean

A two-day conference will be held from Thursday, May 23rd to Friday, May 24th, 2019 at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C that will focus on the theme " Digital Economy Moonshot for the Eastern Caribbean"

This conference will bring together policy makers and technical teams from Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as well as representatives of the World Bank, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL), the OECS Commission and international companies.

The Digital Economy Conference aims to discuss various aspects of the digital economy, a term that was coined by global IT expert Don Tapscott in his 1995 best seller titled The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence.

Global Business services giant Deloitte, defines the digital economy as “the economic activity that results from billions of everyday online connections among people, businesses, devices, data, and processes.”

Deloitte further states that, “The backbone of the digital economy is hyper-connectivity which means growing interconnectedness of people, organisations, and machines that results from the Internet, mobile technology and the internet of things (IoT).”

The two-day conference will also explore ways to advance the services within the digital economy throughout the Eastern Caribbean by building on the experiences and needs of the countries. This consultative process will help to inform an action plan for a regional project to be supported by the World Bank.