Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are at a pivotal moment in their digital journeys.[1] Across the region, there is growing recognition of digital transformation as a key driver of economic growth, resilience, and global connectivity. This momentum reached a milestone in 2023 when the information and communication technology (ICT) ministers of thirteen PICs signed the Lagatoi Declaration on Digital Transformation of the Pacific, recognizing the importance of a united front in achieving digital goals across six priority areas: digital transformation, innovation and entrepreneurship, digital security and trust, digital capacity building and skills development, and regional cooperation and representation.
Within this agenda, PICs must navigate complex structural restraints and a set of unique challenges, including small populations, limited resources, geographical remoteness, and susceptibility to disasters and external shocks, all of which significantly shape the digital transformation trajectory of the region. Understanding how these realities interact with digital ambitions would require granular, ground-level analysis of policy implementation and stakeholder perspectives.
In August 2025, Carnegie India’s scholars attended the Pacific Cyber Week, organized by the Partners in the Blue Pacific in Nadi, Fiji, and engaged with several government and non-government stakeholders across PICs. Their visit formed part of a knowledge-gathering exercise focused on the state of digital transformation in select islands and across the region as a whole. As part of this effort, they held closed-door meetings with government representatives from the ICT and Digital Transformation departments of Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu, and the Solomon Islands, and industry stakeholders engaged in cybersecurity and ICT infrastructure development in the Pacific. This article is a collation of the learnings and reflections that emerged from these closed-door interactions.
The State of Digital Readiness Across Pacific Island Countries
While the state of digital infrastructure varies significantly across PICs, internet penetration has grown substantially in recent years through subsea fiber cables and satellite internet, and all the countries in the region are expected to be connected through submarine cables by the end of 2025. Starlink has been widely adopted across the region, often providing consumers with higher speed and cost-effectiveness compared to submarine cable–based internet connectivity. Technology giants like Google are also playing a key role in assisting PICs with their submarine cable infrastructure. However, recent disruptions to submarine cables caused by natural disasters represent a growing threat.
Tuvalu’s experience illustrates both the opportunities and challenges in infrastructure development. A government stakeholder traced Tuvalu’s ICT journey to 2018 when a World Bank–funded project was initiated to establish fiber cable connectivity for the island. However, soon after it was approved, it “encountered policy-related delays in 2019, which were compounded by border closures and other public health restrictions that were imposed from February 2020 until February 2023 due to the COVID-19 global pandemic.” The project has since been restructured twice and is now expected to be completed by 2027. The island ultimately benefited from the Google-led Bulikula Project that laid fiber cables from Fiji to Guam. Similarly, the 2022 volcanic eruption significantly disrupted connectivity in Tonga, and Starlink played a vital role in restoring it after the disaster.
Discussions with stakeholders also revealed clear differences in digital transformation maturity levels. Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa are leading in digital transformation and state of readiness, supported by political stability considerations, followed by Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Solomon Islands. Larger countries like Fiji have developed robust banking, card, and digital wallet infrastructure via M-Paisa and maintain a strong strategic focus on utilizing technology for economic growth. Smaller countries like Tonga and Tuvalu are in the process of implementing digital public good assets such as OpenCRVS. Meanwhile, despite comprehensive digital policies, countries like PNG face challenges in execution.
Fiji, therefore, exemplifies the more advanced tier of this maturity gradient. The country has established its own middleware for internet payment gateways, authentication layers, and data exchange systems that are maintained and operated in-house by the government. It has also implemented digital civil and business registries and is now exploring cattle and land registries.
Government-led Digital Transformation
Discussions with different stakeholders revealed that several PICs currently understand digital transformation as synonymous with the digitization of government services.
Participants in several meetings pointed to concerning patterns across some PICs where a few influential specialists in government have steered policies toward hyped areas of technology while circumventing legislative procedures and processes. In this context, an industry stakeholder highlighted that a stablecoin initiative had been launched in Palau, one of the smallest islands in the region, even as nearly 42.5 percent of the population lacks internet access. A government stakeholder highlighted a similar top-down approach in the context of TongaPass, a foundational digital ID system built on the MOSIP open-source platform. He noted that while the system provides interoperability for private and public sector services, the decision to introduce and implement TongaPass was taken directly at the prime minister’s office level, precluding comprehensive deliberation on the problem statement for a national ID system in the first place.
Donor Dependencies and Limitations
The digitalization efforts in PICs are predominantly driven by the contributions of donor partners, primarily Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, the European Union, and increasingly, China. While the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank maintain a presence in the donor landscape, funding is largely provided by individual countries and disbursed in the form of grants. The only exceptions to this pattern are Fiji and PNG, which do not share the same dependencies owing to their size and economic strength, as well as their relatively more developed institutional capacities, stronger telecommunications infrastructure, and greater ability to attract private sector investment compared to smaller Pacific Island states.
Participants at the Pacific Cyber Week highlighted that donor funding in the region tends to focus on providing lump-sum, one-time capital expenditure in the form of physical digital infrastructure and, often, limited attention is directed toward system maintenance and local technical capacity development. Conversations with industry stakeholders highlighted challenges around technology compatibility, where some donated ICT infrastructure was complex or not optimally sized for the scale and specific needs of PICs.
Tuvalu’s digital transformation experience demonstrates both the constraints and opportunities of donor-driven development. An ICT government stakeholder from Tuvalu explained that under the terms of a World Bank grant, the government was required to utilize funds within a specific timeframe, leading their cabinet to approve digital overhauls of health, attorney general, and immigration offices. While this accelerated digitization, it also meant that transformation timelines were driven by donor requirements rather than organic institutional readiness.
Despite the lack of donor-partner cooperation and limited collaboration across countries, examples of informal cooperation continue to exist. An industry stakeholder cited how, after Palau’s ransomware attack, when the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) experienced a similar attack, Palau informally reached out to share intelligence about the type of ransomware and response strategies.
Talent Flight and Local Capacity-Building
Talent flight represents a persistent problem across all PICs. Due to limited employment opportunities in most of these countries, skilled individuals migrate to developed nations seeking better opportunities, facilitated by favorable migration and movement agreements, particularly with Australia and New Zealand. This challenge is particularly acute when professionals reach certain technical levels and are unable to advance further in their home countries. The problem is compounded by the relatively small populations of some countries that cannot sufficiently support local economies.
While governments of PICs are placing greater emphasis on donors to support local digital capacity building, limited local talent remains a persistent challenge, creating a fundamental tension in digital transformation efforts, where the human capital necessary for sustainable development continues to migrate to more developed economies.
Country-Specific Drivers of Digital Transformation
While PICs face common challenges to digital transformation, their efforts are driven by distinct contexts. Each country’s digitalization journey reflects unique geographical, economic, and existential challenges that shape its priorities and approaches to building digital infrastructure and capacity.
Fiji
Fiji’s digital transformation is being fundamentally driven by economic imperatives and smoother public service delivery. Supported by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the Fijian government has developed a comprehensive National Digital Strategy (NDS) focused on fostering a digital economy for regional growth while recognizing the potential role of digital technology in addressing the geographical challenge of connecting multiple Fijian islands. Government stakeholder meetings highlighted how the Fijian government had consulted more than eighty organizations in drafting the NDS and established a memorandum of understanding with PNG for cooperation on digital transformation. At the same time, despite high literacy rates, the low digital literacy in Fiji remains a significant barrier to implementing the NDS. Even large commercial businesses like major hotel chains have struggled to integrate with the government’s digital platforms aimed at improving ease of doing business.
Tuvalu
Contrasted with Fiji, Tuvalu’s digital transformation efforts present perhaps the most unique case, driven not by economic opportunity but by existential necessity due to climate change. According to climate predictions, the capital of Funafuti is expected to be inundated by tidal waters within the next three decades, requiring Tuvaluans to migrate from their homeland. In this context, the government of Tuvalu is working toward becoming a digital nation, with efforts spearheaded by the Tuvaluan Minister of Justice. First announced at COP27 in 2022, the country has developed a digital nationhood strategy to perpetuate national identity and governance in the digital realm through operationalizing e-residency. As part of this plan, government services, cultural archives, and citizenship verification will be digitized to maintain government authority over the population even as physical territory becomes uninhabitable. Currently, however, 4G services are “only available on Tuvalu’s capital Island Funafuti with deployment progressing to the outer islands,” supported by Accenture’s role in digital upgrades and the Pacific Community’s (SPC) assistance in setting up a civil registry system using OpenCRVS.
The Solomon Islands
The digital journey of the Solomon Islands is characterized by a desire to transition away from its completely cash-based economy, which is majorly supported by agriculture. However, as highlighted during government stakeholder meetings, digital transformation efforts would need to co-exist with or navigate through existing cultural frameworks for trust and verification. In a meeting with a government stakeholder, it was highlighted how the identity verification system in the Solomon Islands reflected strong cultural traditions. For instance, given that several Solomon Islanders did not possess IDs such as passports or driver’s licenses, the banking system in the country often relies on traditional verification methods of letters from elders; a practice where community elders formally attest to a person’s self-identification, demonstrating how digital progress can honor and integrate traditional social structures.
Regional Implications and Strategic Considerations
The digital transformation experiences of PICs reveal several critical patterns. The tension between donor dependency and sovereign digital development remains a defining characteristic of the region’s approach to technology adoption. While donor funding enables infrastructure development that might otherwise not be possible, it also creates dependencies that may not align with long-term national interests or local capacity-building needs.
The success of informal cooperation mechanisms, such as the cybersecurity intelligence sharing between Palau and the FSM, suggests potential for more structured regional collaboration frameworks. However, donor preferences for bilateral relationships and limited institutional capacity continue to constrain broader regional cooperation.
The brain drain challenge represents perhaps the most fundamental constraint on sustainable digital transformation in the region. Without mechanisms to retain technical talent or create pathways for diaspora engagement, PICs will continue to struggle to build and maintain sophisticated digital systems, regardless of infrastructure investments.
Finally, from Fiji’s digital economy focus to Tuvalu’s climate-driven digital nationhood, the varying approaches to digital transformation demonstrate how geographic and political contexts shape technology adoption strategies in small island developing states. These innovations may offer valuable lessons for others facing similar constraints of scale, geography, and resources. How successfully PICs navigate these approaches will not only determine their own digital futures but will also provide a blueprint for digital transformation in similar contexts globally.
[1] The PIC network comprises fourteen countries: The Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. “Pacific Island Countries Network,” United Nations Environment Programme, accessed September 29, 2025, https://www.unep.org/ozonaction/pacific-island-countries-network.
