The IDCA Global Foundation addresses the SIDS Future Forum in Wilton Park, UK on issues confronting SIDS in the pursuit of technology-powered economic growth

Wilton Park, January 14, 2026 – The CEO of the IDCA Global Foundation, Dr. Simona Marinescu, attended the SIDS Future Forum in Wilton Park, United Kingdom, joining a wide range of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and international partners, including representatives of the Government of the United Kingdom, the European Union, the OECD, and the United Nations. The Forum provided a platform to review progress on the implementation of the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS (ABAS 2024-2034) and to reflect on how growth models for Small Island Developing States must evolve in the context of accelerating climate impacts and rapid technological change.

In her interventions across both plenary discussions and breakout sessions, Dr. Marinescu drew attention to a structural paradox at the heart of the SIDS development challenge. She noted that many Small Island Developing States possess assets of significant value to the global system that do not translate into commensurate internal economic or social impact. These assets include geostrategic location along major maritime and digital routes, vast ocean spaces and biodiversity critical to global climate regulation and food systems, climate-related services of global importance, data-relevant geography, and mobile labour forces that sustain key sectors in other economies.

She underlined that while the external value of these assets is widely recognised and actively utilised, the mechanisms through which value is captured are largely located outside SIDS. Ownership, pricing, data governance, intellectual property, and downstream value creation tend to take place offshore, resulting in limited domestic compounding effects. Revenues are often episodic rather than systemic, and institutional frameworks remain oriented toward managing projects rather than stewarding high-value tangible and intangible assets.

Dr. Marinescu argued that this structural misalignment explains why incremental approaches to development—particularly those that treat technology as an add-on to existing economic models—fail to deliver resilience or transformation. In the intelligence age, she stressed, growth increasingly depends on ownership and governance of infrastructure, data, platforms, and skills. Without redesigning national growth models to convert externally generated value into internal impact, technological advancement risks accelerating dependency rather than reducing vulnerability.

She further highlighted that a redesigned growth model for SIDS must place technology at its core, beginning with a structured assessment of digital and physical infrastructure, green energy systems, water security, and relevant skills, followed by the development of a coherent, costed, and investment-ready roadmap. Such an approach enables SIDS to move more rapidly up the value ladder and reconnect with the global economy as it exists today.

In this context, Dr. Marinescu outlined how the work of the International Data Center Authority supports countries in designing and owning their digital infrastructure so that data, platforms, and the value they generate remain anchored in national development priorities. She also highlighted the complementary role of the IDCA Global Foundation in strengthening the human and institutional dimensions of transformation through professionalisation, applied research, and the meaningful adoption of artificial intelligence across key sectors.

The discussions also opened avenues for collaboration. The ODI Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (RESI) – the initiator of the SIDS Future forum – and the IDCA Global Foundation explored ways of working together in supporting SIDS governments to further advance this rethinking of growth. The shared ambition is to explore how resilience, sustainability, and economic transformation can be redesigned for Small Island Developing States in the intelligence age, aligning analytical rigor with practical pathways for action.

About IDCA

International Data Center Authority (IDCA) is the global independent Digital Economy think tank that works with nations to create AI policies, Digital Hubs, and Digital Economies through the standardization of the approach, selection, design, feasibility, operation, and various processes and methodologies of digital infrastructure and related processes and systems. IDCA is represented in more than 40 countries and is active globally in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

About the IDCA Global Foundation

The IDCA Global Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the mission to advance digital equity, sovereign digital infrastructure, and inclusive digital transformation across the globe. The IDCA Global Foundation is headquartered in the Washington, DC area, with offices and partner organizations in six continents. The foundation works with agencies from the United Nations, World Bank, and other key organizations at the intersection of technology, development, education, finance, and governance to support countries and communities in building digital futures that generate economic opportunity, social development, and institutional resilience.