Saint Kitts and Nevis is set to build a new data centre in a bid to boost its economy.
The Caribbean nation’s Prime Minister Timothy Harris made the proposal in a speech to the sixth National Convention of the People’s Labour Party (PLP), saying: “we will build out a state-of-the-art data centre here bringing much big business to St. Kitts and Nevis.”
Harris underlined the importance of the digital economy, saying that the government aimed to “target high-tech industries” to help create “new jobs and improved opportunities for our people to work away from home.”
The Prime Minister also said that Saint Kitts and Nevis would explore sustainable energy initiatives in the face of rising fuel prices. Harris claimed that this would include the use of the ocean – dubbed ‘the blue economy’.
Data Centre Dynamics reported that the islands have at least one data centre in the form of the Government Information and Communication Technology Centre, located in the capital of Basseterre. This data centre was last upgraded in 2015 after sustaining damage in a storm.
Since 1995, Basseterre has also been a landing point for the Eastern Caribbean Fibre System (ECFS) system. In 2006 Digicel landed its South Caribbean fibre cable in Bassterre, and this was joined in 2013 by a landing point for the Dutch government’s Saba, Statia Cable System (SSCS) to Anguilla.