Thank you, Moderator.
Excellencies, colleague Heads of Government, young leaders of the Commonwealth.
I have three things to speak to you about this afternoon.
A promise broken.
A man from St Lucia.
And what we owe you.
The promise first.
For decades, my generation told yours: stay in school, qualify yourself, and jobs will be waiting for you.
For many, it was true. For too many, it has not been.
A qualification should be a passport to opportunity. Yet too many young people have done everything we asked of them, only to arrive at a closed door. They have earned their qualifications. We have yet to build an economy that gives their talent somewhere to go.
Across the Caribbean today, young people have certificates on their walls and no work in their hands. Six in ten people in the Commonwealth are under thirty. Roughly one in four young people is not working, studying or training. In many of our countries, two children in three have no internet at home.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is changing work faster than our education systems can prepare young people for it, and a single hurricane can erase years of an island’s progress. Some disruptions pass. Others change the economy for good. We must equip our young people to earn a living through both.
Now, the man from St Lucia.
In the early 1930s, a young man there wanted to become an engineer. He quickly realised that no government department and no company in the colonial Caribbean would hire a Black engineer. So he changed his course of study. He studied economics, won a scholarship to London, went on to lead the University of the West Indies, and in 1979 won the Nobel Prize in Economics. His name was Sir Arthur Lewis.
Lewis succeeded despite the system he was born into. His story should inspire us. It should also trouble us, because too many talented young people today still have to succeed despite the system.
Our task is to make sure the next Arthur Lewis never has to change course to get through the door.
That brings me to what we owe you. Here I speak to my fellow Heads of Government as much as to you. Three things.
One. Let skills travel. A qualification earned in Nassau should count in Kingston, Accra or Toronto, without starting again at every border.
Two. Connect every young person. For island nations, the internet carries the classroom, the marketplace and the job interview. We must invest in reliable, affordable connections that reach every community. A student in Saint Vincent should be able to take the same online course as a student in London, with the same chance to succeed.
Three. Invest in our young people. Too many small states face an impossible choice between servicing their debts and funding the classrooms their children need. When Heads discuss reform of the global financial system tomorrow, we must put education at the centre of that discussion. Every year a young person spends without the chance to learn or work carries a cost that lasts far beyond a budget cycle.
In The Bahamas, we have sought to put these principles into practice. A year ago this month, we launched Upskill Bahamas, offering Bahamians aged sixteen and over free online courses leading to recognised certificates, with access to learning from world-leading universities, including Harvard, Oxford and MIT. We initially provided eight thousand places. More than ten thousand people sought to enrol in the first month, prompting us to expand the programme to fifteen thousand places. Among the most popular subjects were digital marketing, business finance and artificial intelligence.
In April, we celebrated our first thousand graduates. The youngest was sixteen. The eldest was sixty-seven. Three in four were women, which tells us we must work harder to reach our young men.
I have called this closing the possibility gap: the gap between what your skills allow you to do and what you dream of doing. A certificate alone will not close it. So through our Opportunity Hub, we are connecting graduates to employers and support for small businesses. We will judge Upskill Bahamas, and we should be judged, by how many of those graduates find work. We invite Commonwealth countries to look at Upskill as a model.
Colleague Heads of Government, the young people in this room have told us what they need. The responsibility to act now rests with us.
Let us leave Antigua with a clear task for our ministers: agree how qualifications will be recognised across our countries, set targets for affordable internet access, and identify the funding to bring more young people into training and paid work. Young people must help shape these plans and hold us accountable for delivering them.
At our next meeting, let us report how many young people have gained a connection, how many have had their skills recognised, and how many have moved from training into a livelihood. That is how we will know whether our promises are working.
I spoke earlier of a qualification as a passport to opportunity. Our young people have worked hard to earn that passport. We, as leaders, must ensure it takes them somewhere.
The next Arthur Lewis may be sitting in this room. Let us build a Commonwealth in which that young person can pursue their calling, with the opportunity and support to see it through.
Thank you.