In our October 2025 Community Chat, and with members of the Caribbean tech community, Founder and Lead Consultant of ProTradeConsult, Lisa Callender of Jamaica, and Chartered Accountant, Certified Information Systems Auditor, and Certified Information Privacy Professional, Allison James of Barbados, the panel discusses: the relevance of harmonised technology regulation in growing our economies through the the free movement of people and integrated payment platforms; can blockchain technologies be a new development partner for the Caribbean?, and investing in AI: What should be the region’s priorities? 

 

This episode is also available on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music.

Welcome to our October 2025 Community Chat! Once again, we have an interesting mix of topics, which are outlined below. However, allow us to first introduce our guest panellists.

 

Introducing our guest panellists

Lisa Callender
Allison James

 

Lisa Z. Callender is a seasoned Caribbean development expert with over 30 years of experience driving trade, investment, and private-sector capacity building for growth across the region. As a consultant to governments, development banks, multilateral organisations and entrepreneurs, she’s led more than 60 projects in 25 countries, helping articulate policy, strengthen strategy and boost export competitiveness. Founder of ProTradeConsult, Lisa specialises in turning ideas into investment-ready projects and building resilient value chains across the Caribbean. With a background in industrial engineering, design, and business management, she brings a unique blend of technical precision and creative insight to everything she does. Passionate about innovation, inclusion, and Caribbean–Pan-African collaboration, Lisa is known for transforming bold visions into sustainable, high-impact initiatives.

Allison James is a digital trust professional who bridges the gaps between people, processes, and technology to help organisations thrive in today’s complex digital environment. As a chartered accountant with a foundation in technology risk management, IT governance, cybersecurity, and data privacy, she guides clients in building digital ecosystems that are not only resilient and secure but also strategically aligned with their business goals. Allison empowers organisations to confidently embrace change, ensuring that innovation is balanced with robust controls and sustainable practices. 

 

The topics discussed

As of 1 October 2025, Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have implemented full free movement among themselves to live, work, and travel between these countries indefinitely without a visa or work permit. To successfully achieve this milestone, some degree of systems integration and procedural harmonisation across the four participating countries would be necessary. However, the very same is necessary to facilitate the region’s continued economic growth. The panel thus kicked off the discussion with the topic, The relevance of harmonised technology regulation in growing our economies through the free movement of people and integrated payment platforms,which not only touched on free movement but also payments and the movement of funds across the region.  

For our second topic, the panel revisited blockchain technology, which arguably has been overshadowed by artificial intelligence in recent years, and which, if some of the pundits are to be believed, will solve all of our problems. However, as an immutable and distributed ledger that facilitates activities that require data security, traceability, and transparency, there would be services and applications to which blockchain technology would best be suited. Hence, Can blockchain technologies be a new development partner for the Caribbean?

Finally, a recent article on ICT Pulse entitled AI won’t save the Caribbean region, unless we get serious about strategy, was in response to the article in one of the regional newspapers calling on Caribbean countries to invest more in AI and figure out how to export our capacity to win new markets. We sought to continue the conversation by discussing, Investing in AI: What should be the region’s priorities?, to possibly identify priority areas or real-world applications here in the region that ought to be given attention

 

We would love to hear your thoughts!

Do leave us a comment either here beneath this article, or on our Facebook or LinkedIn pages, or via Twitter, @ICTPulse.

Also, if you or a member of your network is interested in joining us for an episode, do get in touch.

Let’s make it happen!

 

Select links

Below are links to some of the organisations and resources that were mentioned during the episode, or might otherwise be useful:

 

 

Images credit:  L Callender;  A James; Gerd Altmann (Pixabay); Joshua Woroniecki (Pixabay); rawpixel.com (Freepik)

Music credit: The Last Word (Oui Ma Chérie), by Andy Narrell

Podcast editing support: Mayra Bonilla Lopez