Saint-Barth joins the CTU: a digital Caribbean

🇫🇷 Lire en français : Saint-Barth à la CTU : la Caraïbe numérique avance

Meeting in Cayenne in late September for the CTU’s 32nd General Conference of Ministers, the Caribbean’s ICT ministers approved the admission of Saint Barthélemy as an Associate Member of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, pending formal accession. On paper, an administrative line. In reality, one more step in a deeper movement: the digital integration of the Caribbean across the language divide, with Guadeloupe sitting at the heart of the story.

What was decided in Cayenne  

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The essentials: Saint Barthélemy becomes an Associate Member of the CTU, the organisation coordinating the Caribbean’s digital policies. The decision was taken on 20–24 September in Cayenne, the first time the CTU’s flagship event was ever held in a French territory.

The news comes via Gerard Best, a Trinidadian journalist who follows Caribbean digital cooperation closely. CTU ICT Week was held in Cayenne, French Guiana, from 20 to 24 September 2026, under the theme of resilience, inclusion, cybersecurity and innovation in Caribbean digital development, with a motto that reads like a manifesto: “One Region. One Rhythm. One Digital Future.” A first in a French territory, and the first time senior French and EU officials engaged directly with the General Conference of Ministers.

Statutes rewritten to welcome French territories  

Along the way, the ministers rewrote the Union’s membership rules, creating a “Member Country” category with sub-categories distinguishing CARICOM Member States from Associate Members. Translation: the CTU is structurally organising itself to welcome non-anglophone territories. This is no longer diplomatic exception handling; it is institutional architecture.

“Saint Barthélemy’s admission to the CTU shows that CaribIX was more than a proof of concept. Regional institutions can produce diplomatic results by deploying the human network that communities like CaribNOG have built over many years to do technical work across the language divide. This is exactly how Caribbean-wide multilateral cooperation goes from project-based to permanent.”

— Gerard Best, the DJ (Development Journalist) who follows Caribbean digital cooperation

The road runs through our islands: CaribIX  

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Saint-Barth’s admission did not fall from the sky: it is the outcome of CaribIX, an Interreg Caraïbes project launched in 2022 that equipped Guadeloupe, Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin with internet exchange points.

To understand this admission, go back to March 2022 and the launch of CaribIX: a project funded by INTERREG Caraïbes and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, to establish internet exchange points (IXPs) in Guadeloupe, Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin. The coordinator: the CTU itself, with CaribNOG as regional support partner, alongside the Région Guadeloupe, the Collectivité of Saint-Barthélemy and Telem SXM.

The results are concrete and dated: Saint Barthélemy’s SBH-IX was launched in Gustavia on 30 June 2022, Saint Martin’s Smart-IX in Marigot in October of the same year. An IXP is the invisible plumbing of the internet: local traffic is exchanged locally instead of making the round trip through Paris or Miami. Lower latency, better resilience: a subject businesses here know well; I wrote about Guadeloupe’s digital resilience here (in French).

That ground-level collaboration is precisely what the ministers highlighted: the admission recognises the working relationship built through CaribIX and the Saint-Barth Internet Exchange, as a further step in extending the Union’s reach in the northern arc of the Antilles and bridging the French-, English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. The lesson is crystal clear: in the Caribbean, integration does not trickle down from treaties; it grows up from projects.

French Guiana opened the door. Who’s next?  

The sequence has been fast. On 1 October 2025 in Kingston, ministers unanimously approved French Guiana’s application for associate membership, in the name of digital cooperation between CARICOM and the French territories. On 5 May 2026, the formal agreement was signed at CTU headquarters in Port of Spain, between the then CTU President and the President of the Collectivité Territoriale de Guyane, Gabriel Serville, with the French Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago in attendance. And in September 2026, Cayenne hosted the Union’s flagship event.

Cayenne also renewed the Union’s governance: St Kitts and Nevis takes over the CTU Presidency, represented by Minister Konris Maynard, with St Vincent and the Grenadines holding the Vice-Presidency of the General Conference of Ministers.

French Guiana, then Saint Barthélemy. Gerard Best closes his analysis with a wink: if Saint Martin or Guadeloupe come knocking, CTU ministers may feel a touch of déjà vu. The question is no longer “if”, but “when”.

What it means for Caribbean businesses, on both sides of the language line  

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Neighbouring markets are moving closer: cooperating institutions, connected infrastructure, shared European funding. To benefit, one condition: exist in both languages.

It would be tempting to file all this under regional diplomacy. That would be a misreading. What is being built is a Caribbean digital space where language borders matter less and less: Interreg funding that systematically pairs francophone and anglophone islands, institutions like the CTU adapting their statutes to welcome us, infrastructure physically linking our territories.

Neighbouring markets thirty minutes away  

For a small or medium business in Guadeloupe, the consequence is very practical: Dominica, Saint Lucia, Antigua or Barbados are no longer theoretical markets. They are neighbours 30 minutes away by plane, with cooperation frameworks that already exist and strengthen year after year. In the other direction, anglophone Caribbean companies are looking at the French Antilles: a gateway to Europe and its funding programmes.

Being readable on both sides of the language line  

At Kimoun, we have made this bridge our home turf: websites and content designed bilingual from day one, in French and English, for businesses here that target the Caribbean, and for Caribbean players that target the francophone market. This very article exists in both languages, as it should.

Ministers closed the conference by reaffirming the vision carried by the Week’s own anthem: whatever their language, geography or constitutional status, the peoples of the Caribbean move forward together. One Region, One Rhythm, One Digital Future. From Le Moule, Guadeloupe: count us in.

There is no comment section on this blog, and the question I leave you with deserves better than silence: has your business ever worked with a neighbouring island across the language line, or what is still standing in the way?

So let’s continue elsewhere. Join the conversation on LinkedIn: I reply to comments, and the best exchanges often become the next article. And to follow the building of this digital Caribbean without having to think about it, subscribe to the Kimoun newsletter: once or twice a month, a curated digest that goes straight to the point. One-click unsubscribe.