Prime Minister Browne, our host and our brother. Madam Secretary-General. Lord Marland. Excellencies. Leaders of business. And the young people of the Commonwealth, in this room and watching from home.
Antigua and Barbuda, thank you for welcoming fifty-six nations with a warmth only the Caribbean knows how to give. Lord Marland, thank you for inviting me back.
Friends, I want to make three points this afternoon. First, where the Commonwealth’s power comes from. Second, the test facing our young people in the digital age. And third, what we should do about it, together.
I start with power.
People often ask me whether the Commonwealth is still relevant. My answer is simple. The Commonwealth is as relevant as its courage.
Here is what I mean.
In 1985, Commonwealth leaders met in my country, The Bahamas. South Africa was still subject to apartheid. Black South Africans had no vote and no freedom. Nelson Mandela was in prison.
Some powerful voices in that room wanted to go slowly. The Commonwealth refused. Under the chairmanship of Sir Lynden Pindling, the father of our nation, leaders signed the Nassau Accord. It told South Africa’s government to end apartheid. And it sent senior Commonwealth figures into South Africa to deliver that message face to face.
Years earlier, the Commonwealth had also agreed to cut sporting ties with apartheid South Africa. Think about what that meant here in the Caribbean, where cricket is close to a religion. It was hard. We did it anyway.
When Nelson Mandela walked free, he came to The Bahamas to say thank you. And in 1994, a free South Africa rejoined this family of nations.
The Commonwealth had no army. It had no veto. Most of its members were small, and many were poor. But it had courage, and it used that courage together.
Courage is the scarcest resource in public life. You cannot borrow it. You cannot buy it. Every generation of leaders has to find it for itself.
Every generation faces one great test of courage. Ours has arrived.
That test is about our young people.
Six in ten people in the Commonwealth are under thirty. That is more than one and a half billion young people.
Too many of them are struggling. Around one in four young people in the Commonwealth is not working, studying or training. As I speak to you this afternoon, a young graduate somewhere in the Caribbean has done everything we asked of her. Every exam she earns her qualification. And she cannot find a job.
At the same time, the world economy is changing faster than ever. Artificial intelligence will create many new jobs and wipe out many old ones.
Here is the challenge in plain terms.
Every time a young person in Nassau, Kingston or Lagos searches online, watches a video or posts a photo, they create data.
Data is the raw material of the new economy. Companies use it to build artificial intelligence and to earn enormous profits. Most of those companies are located far from our shores.
We have lived this story before.
For centuries, the Caribbean supplied the raw material, and others made the money. Our sugar was cut here and refined abroad. Our bauxite was dug from Jamaican and Guyanese soil and turned into aluminium in other countries’ smelters. Too often, the finished product came back across the ocean, and we paid full price to buy back what began as ours.
The cane was cut here. The fortunes were made elsewhere.
Yesterday, it was raw materials. Today, it is data
I want to be fair. These technology companies have done remarkable things, and many are valued partners in our countries. We want them here. Our concern is simple. Too much power now sits with too few companies, and the rules are being written without us.
That affects our economies. It also affects something deeper: our story.
Our young people carry a proud and painful history. Many are descendants of people who were enslaved, or brought across the ocean as indentured labourers. That history is theirs to tell.
Whoever owns the platform will own the story. If others own the platforms where our music, our history and our languages live, others will decide how our story is told.
Our young people are the storytellers of an unjust past. They must be the authors of a just future.
So what should we do? Three things.
First, we must stop competing against each other. Too many small countries try to attract technology investment by offering tax breaks and handing over access to their people’s data. We end up bidding against our own neighbours. A small state that negotiates alone negotiates from weakness.
Second, we must protect our digital sovereignty. By that I mean a simple right: our people’s right to decide how their data is used, who profits from it, and which laws protect it. We fought for the right to govern ourselves. Digital sovereignty is the unfinished business of independence.
Third, we must build.
Imagine a Commonwealth where a young woman in Bridgetown can learn artificial intelligence, earn a qualification recognised in fifty-six countries, and start a business that sells to all of them.
That Commonwealth is within our reach. The Bahamas is proposing that the Commonwealth build what we call a Brave Architecture. It has four parts, and they are easy to remember. Skills that travel. Data that answers to our laws. Infrastructure we share. Stories we own.
Skills that travel means a qualification earned in Freeport should be recognised in London, Toronto and India. Our young people should never have to start again every time they cross a border.
Data that answers to our laws means common Commonwealth rules on how our citizens’ data is collected, protected and taxed. No small country should have to negotiate with the world’s biggest companies alone.
Shared infrastructure means pooling our resources. Few small countries can afford their own data centres or cyber defences. Together, we can.
Stories we own means a Commonwealth fund to digitise and protect our music, our archives and our languages. If our culture is used to train artificial intelligence, our communities should give permission and share in the rewards.
The big technology companies have size and money. We have something too. We have 2.7 billion people. We share a language and a legal tradition. And we have a history of standing together when it counts. Alone, a small state negotiates from weakness. Together, fifty-six nations set the terms.
We can build this with the Commonwealth institutions we already have. I am asking Heads of Government to commission a plan by our next meeting. The Bahamas is ready to help.
To the business leaders here, I have one request. Before you leave Antigua, make one commitment. Offer an apprenticeship. Open a training programme. Invest in a young founder from a small island. We ask only that you act in your own interest, because our young people are the best investment opportunity on this planet.
Friends, I said I would make three points.
The Commonwealth’s power comes from courage. The test of our generation is whether our young people will own their digital future. And the answer is to build that future together.
Apartheid once looked permanent. Today, the power of a few technology giants can look permanent too. History tells us otherwise. What people build, people can reshape.
I remember October 1985 in Nassau. I remember the pride we felt, as a small country, watching the Commonwealth find its nerve on our soil. It taught me something I have carried ever since. People reshape the world fastest when they can rely on one another.
I have also learned what it costs when people cannot rely on anything at all.
In 2019, Hurricane Dorian tore through Abaco and Grand Bahama. When the winds dropped, I walked through what was left. Families had lost their homes, their businesses and people they loved. The question I heard more than any other was a simple one. What happens now? People can carry a great deal of pain. What breaks them is not knowing what comes next.
You do not need a hurricane to feel that. Ask any shopkeeper in St John’s or Acra what keeps her awake at night. It is rarely the hard work. It is the not knowing. Will the shipment clear customs? Will the price of fuel jump again? Will the rules change before the contract is signed?
Today, whole countries lie awake asking the same questions. Trade rules are rewritten overnight. Tariffs rise and fall with little warning. Our young people are told to train for jobs that may not exist by the time they graduate.
In a world this unsettled, we can give each other something rare: certainty.
Fifty-six nations can make promises to one another, and keep them. A young woman who earns a qualification in Freeport can know it will count in Toronto. A company that invests in one of our countries can know the rules on its data will not change on a whim. A small island that cannot afford its own cyber defences can know its partners will share theirs.
When I go home from Antigua, I want to be able to tell that shopkeeper, and every young Bahamian who is watching today, that their Commonwealth has their back.
The world may be uncertain. The Commonwealth does not have to be.
Will we seize this moment, or will we watch it pass?
Our ancestors fought to own themselves. Our parents fought to govern themselves. Our children must now fight to define themselves in a digital world.
They must never fight alone.
In 1985, the Commonwealth came to Nassau and chose courage. In 2026, here in Antigua and Barbuda, let us choose it again.
One day, our young people will tell the story of this moment. Let us give them a story worth telling.
Thank you.