What Does a Post-COVID World Look Like in Small Island Developing States?

This blog post was first published by DiploFoundation.

“We need to ensure we digitalize all of our business processes as to enable the effective digital transformation of our governments, businesses, and educational institutions so that the disruptive solutions brought by the global pandemic, including remote work, digital health, e-learning, and fintech, are collectively recognized as a pivot point in our history.”

There… I’ve done it… I’ve met the challenge of how many currently fashionable buzzwords and jargon I can stuff into a single sentence.

Everything we’ve been reading about dealing with the issues the global economy will face in the post-COVID-19 world tends to sound something like what I’ve written above. I can’t promise you that I will not touch upon these topics and mention these buzzwords again, but I do hope I can bring a certain degree of pragmatism to the conversation, especially given that I hail from Trinidad and Tobago, a twin-island country in the Caribbean, categorized as a small island developing state (SIDS) along with approximately 50 odd others scattered across our various oceans.

SIDS economies are generally characterized by their dependence on earning revenue from the exportation of either raw materials or partially-finished goods extracted Continue reading