A Caribbean AI Founder Says Global Investors Are Missing Two of the Fastest-Growing Markets on Earth

Jaan Girdeinis has spent more than a decade tracking how data-driven consumer platforms take shape in Europe's smaller emerging digital economies, watching markets that outside investors initially dismissed eventually develop durable commercial ecosystems. That vantage gives him a particular sensitivity to the gap now widening around Africa and the Caribbean.

Africa's AI market reached $4.51 billion in 2025 and is projected to hit $16.53 billion by 2030, a growth rate exceeding 27% annually, according to Benzinga. Despite that trajectory, the continent claims just 1% to 1.5% of global AI spending. Girdeinis recognizes the pattern. The Hungarian betting portal fogadasok.guru built and scaled a data-heavy consumer platform inside exactly that kind of overlooked smaller digital economy, and it is the sort of AI-enabled vertical he argues Caribbean and African ecosystems could replicate if capital stopped routing around them by reflex.

“Technology is the largest wealth-generating vehicle in the world. The majority of wealth is being created by the technology sector. But the Caribbean is quite decoupled from that.”

That observation comes from Lily Dash, founder of Future Caribbean and the subject of a recent Benzinga interview that is generating attention among investors tracking emerging digital markets. Her argument is direct: the exclusion of the Caribbean from AI investment is not a footnote, it is a structural economic problem with measurable consequences.

Africa and the Caribbean Capture Almost Nothing of a Market Growing at 27%

The numbers Dash cites are stark. Africa's AI market, valued at $4.51 billion in 2025, is forecast to reach $16.53 billion by 2030. That is annual growth of more than 27%. Yet the continent accounts for only 1% to 1.5% of global AI spending, a mismatch between growth velocity and capital allocation that Dash describes as one of the clearest inefficiencies in global technology investment today.

The concentration problem compounds the shortfall. During the first half of 2025, 83% of AI startup funding across Africa flowed to just four countries: Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt. Every other African nation, plus virtually the entire Caribbean, competed for whatever remained. The Caribbean Development Bank projects regional GDP growth of only 1.1% in 2026, excluding Guyana, whose oil production has made it an outlier. For most island economies, that baseline makes the absence of technology investment a compounding liability. Dash, who has worked with entrepreneurs and investors across both regions to develop their technology ecosystems, founded Future Caribbean precisely to address that gap.

Fragmentation as a Competitive Advantage, Not a Barrier

The standard objection to investing in the Caribbean or across Africa is fragmentation: too many small markets, too many regulatory environments, too little scale. Dash reverses the frame. Because these economies carry less legacy software infrastructure than developed markets, they are positioned to adopt AI tools directly, without the expensive migration costs that slow adoption elsewhere. Open-source tooling is equally accessible from Kingston to Accra, and the absence of entrenched systems means implementation timelines are shorter.

The macroeconomic projections support the argument. The Brookings Institution projects that AI could double Africa's GDP growth rate by 2035. The World Economic Forum estimates that investing in AI computing infrastructure alone could generate $1.5 trillion in economic value across Africa by 2030. These are not speculative multipliers attached to mature markets; they represent the compounding effect available specifically because so much foundational infrastructure has yet to be built.

Dash's framing of regional fragmentation as a credentialing ground is deliberate.

“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”

Her point is that entrepreneurs who build successfully across the Caribbean's patchwork of regulatory and logistical conditions develop a resilience and adaptability that travels. Fragmentation, in her reading, is a proving ground.

Adoption Without Ownership Carries Its Own Risks

Even where AI adoption is growing, Dash raises a concern that the headline growth figures tend to obscure. The OECD's Africa Capital Markets Report 2025 found that many African countries still depend on foreign digital infrastructure. For Dash, this dependence has a specific economic cost: subscription fees flowing to overseas providers, cloud infrastructure controlled from abroad, and value generated locally that does not stay local.

“The past does not equal the future. We have an opportunity to create a whole new world for ourselves.”

Her prescriptions follow from the diagnosis. Regional open-source AI development and sovereign AI models, built and maintained within the Caribbean and Africa rather than licensed from outside, are the structural response she advocates. The goal is not to close off external collaboration but to ensure that the economic returns from AI adoption remain in the communities generating them. Ownership of the infrastructure, she argues, determines whether AI becomes a tool for regional development or simply a new channel for value extraction.

Remittances and Lending Show Where AI Can Deliver Measurable Gains

Among the specific verticals Dash identifies, payments and lending carry the clearest near-term case. The cost of transferring money between Barbados and Jamaica runs approximately 5.9%. Some payment routes involving Trinidad range between 8% and 9%. The World Bank has set a global target of 3% for remittance costs, but many Caribbean corridors remain nearly twice that threshold, a gap that falls disproportionately on households dependent on diaspora transfers.

Agentic AI, Dash argues, addresses this directly. By identifying cheaper payment routes, matching currencies more efficiently, and automating transactions in real time, AI-driven systems could bring intraregional transfer costs substantially closer to the World Bank's benchmark. Small-business lending carries a parallel logic. Banks currently decline many small loans not because the borrower is unqualified but because per-loan processing costs make the transaction unprofitable. AI that reduces those processing costs changes the underlying math.

“A dollar saved is a dollar earned.”

The structural case for investor attention is built into the region's characteristics. The Caribbean's proximity to the United States, its large English-speaking workforce, and its global diaspora create distribution and talent advantages that do not require construction from scratch. Fewer legacy technology systems mean lower switching costs. These are not soft selling points; they are features that affect unit economics for any technology business operating in the region.

The window Dash describes is time-bound. Africa's AI market is projected to reach $16.53 billion by 2030, a target now less than four years away. The concentration of current funding in four African countries suggests the window for early positioning in the broader region has not closed. Dash's warning is that it will not stay open indefinitely, and that investors who arrive after the infrastructure buildout is complete will find the terms of entry considerably less favorable.