Caribbean AI Association: New Membership Drive 2026
Caribbean AI leaders across twenty nations have decided that the region will build, govern, and shape AI here rather than only receive what other regions produce. The Caribbean AI Association is now opening a new membership drive across three tiers, with a specific ambition: at least five members from every Caribbean country.
The Caribbean AI Association was founded in 2024 on a specific belief: the region should be shaping how AI is used here, not just receiving what other regions build. The association is now recruiting Executive, Individual, and Personal members across the region, aiming for at least five members from every Caribbean country.
The belief that started this
The belief behind the Caribbean AI Association is that the Caribbean has a choice about what AI does in the region, and that this choice will be made by whoever shows up to make it. CAIA was designed to be the place where the region shows up together, on purpose.
When Adrian Dunkley founded CAIA in 2024, the picture from the Caribbean was fragmented. Individual Caribbean AI professionals, ministries, universities, and companies were all doing real work, but the work was not coordinated into a regional network. The region had talent, programmes, and ambitions running in parallel across the islands, with nothing connecting them into a shared platform.
CAIA was built on the belief that a unified voice was possible. What the region needed was a place for its many voices to gather and be heard together. Two years later, that place exists. Members drawn from across the region run fifteen active programmes together, and the next stage of CAIA's growth is opening: a targeted drive to bring at least five members into the association from every Caribbean country, across three membership tiers.
What is actually happening in Caribbean AI right now
The Caribbean AI Association exists because there is now enough happening in the region to warrant it. In the first half of 2026 alone, Sagicor Financial Corporation committed US$5 million to the University of the West Indies I-INSIGHT institute for Caribbean-focused AI research. Future Caribbean launched the region's first Agentic AI Buildathon in Barbados with IDB Invest, NYSE, ACTAI Global, and OECS partnership. Trinidad and Tobago rolled out VerifyTT and FutureReadyTT as national platforms. Guyana published an AI health inventory. Antigua and Barbuda anchored an AI strategy through UNESCO's Readiness Assessment Methodology. Jamaica launched Tourism 3.0 AI training under Minister Bartlett and a mandatory public sector AI training programme.
On the risk side, the Caribbean AI Risk Management Council published the first edition of the Caribbean AI Risk Management Standard in February 2026, aligned with the EU AI Act, ISO 42001, and Caribbean Data Protection Acts. Maestro AI Labs deployed TurtleBird as a sovereign AI safety layer available to every Caribbean government at no cost. UNESCO's Caribbean AI Policy Roadmap won CARICOM's endorsement in July 2026.
Individually these are already meaningful moves. What has been missing is a single coordinating organisation that gives Caribbean AI leaders a place to meet and gives Caribbean voices a channel to the tables where global AI standards are being written. CAIA has been building itself into that organisation since 2024.
The four pillars of what CAIA does
CAIA organises its work around four pillars, each connected to a regional need and each backed by programmes already running.
The membership drive
Membership is now open across three tiers, with a specific target for the current drive: at least five members from every Caribbean country. The three tiers cover senior leaders shaping strategy at the top of Caribbean institutions, practitioners building the systems on the ground, and personal members who back the movement without needing to work directly in AI.
- Seat at CAIA strategy conversations and policy forums
- Speaking opportunities at flagship regional events
- Contribution to CAIA's positions on Caribbean AI policy
- Direct access to the CAIA executive network
- Priority invitations to ministerial and multilateral roundtables
- Access to the CAIA knowledge library and research
- Invitations to regional events, workshops, and summits
- Membership directory and networking platform
- Quarterly Caribbean AI Intelligence briefings
- Participation in CAIA working groups
- Full membership without needing to work in AI
- Community access and networking directory
- Invitations to open CAIA events and briefings
- Voting rights on association priorities
- The chance to help shape the region's AI future
We did not build the Caribbean AI Association to be another trade group. We built it because we believe the Caribbean has a choice about what AI does here, and the only way that choice gets made is if the region shows up together, on purpose, with something to say. Membership is what showing up looks like.
Why this moment
The Caribbean AI story is at an inflection point in 2026. Autonomous AI attacks are now a documented reality, per the July 2026 breach of Hugging Face by an OpenAI-powered agent. Frontier AI capabilities are compounding faster than the region's institutions were built to handle. The models that will hold the region's questions for the next twenty years are being trained right now, in North America, Europe, and China.
Two years of CAIA established a foundation. The next two years will decide whether the region has a seat at the tables where AI's future is being written, or whether Caribbean voices are heard, if at all, second-hand. Joining CAIA now adds a person to the movement precisely when the movement needs more voices across every Caribbean country.
Who belongs
The current drive is aiming to bring at least five members from every Caribbean country into the association across the three tiers. If you are Caribbean-based or your work touches the Caribbean, and you want the region to shape its own AI future, you belong. The Personal tier means membership does not require an AI job title or an institution behind you.
How to join
Applying is direct. Visit caribbeanaiassociation.com/membership, choose the tier that fits, and submit an application. The CAIA team reviews new members regularly and confirms membership within days for most applications. There is no waiting list.
Every voice in this movement matters. If you build, teach, research, govern, invest in, or think about AI in a Caribbean context, CAIA is the place where that work meets the rest of the region.
Become a Member →Frequently asked questions
The future of Caribbean AI will be written by the people who show up to write it. The Caribbean AI Association is where they meet.Caribbean AI Newsletter · The Island AI Brief, 25 July 2026
The Anansi Doctrine: A Thought Experiment on AI, Power, and What the Caribbean Should Protect
Adrian Dunkley's guest article on why the Caribbean must build its own AI infrastructure, using the Ashanti tradition of Anansi as the framing theory.
Read the piece →Introducing Caribbean AI Signals
Six hundred headlines, threads, and searches told us how the Caribbean is thinking about AI in 2026. Ministry optimism, worker anxiety, and where the region diverges from the global finding.
See the study →The Caribbean AI Roundup: What Has Shipped in the First Half of 2026
TurtleBird, CAIRMC's Risk Management Standard, Trinidad's national platforms, Sagicor UWI, Future Caribbean, and CARICOM's endorsement of the UNESCO Roadmap.
Read the roundup →The Caribbean AI Newsletter is the leading daily source for artificial intelligence news, analysis, and practical insight for the Caribbean. The newsletter covers policy, workforce, cybersecurity, climate resilience, governance, and regional innovation across the whole region, and reports on the Caribbean AI Association's ongoing programmes and membership drives.
