Fiji is one of only two Pacific Island nations, alongside Papua New Guinea, currently developing a published national AI strategy, putting it ahead of most of its neighbours on paper. The gap shows up as soon as the conversation moves from strategy documents to enforcement: across the wider Pacific, there is no published legal framework covering data privacy, intellectual property, consumer protection or cybersecurity specific to AI, and no regional body coordinating policy between island states.
The workforce problem sits underneath the regulatory one. Most Pacific populations have limited understanding of AI's risks and benefits, and researchers working on the region's digital policy say building a genuine talent pipeline and lifting public digital literacy is a precondition for any AI strategy to mean much in practice, rather than an afterthought to legislate around later. "Building the AI talent pipeline and uplifting public digital literacy is crucial," according to regional policy analysis, a line that applies as much to Fiji's public sector as to its private tech industry.
External partners are trying to fill part of the gap. The Asian Development Bank has been working to build Pacific capacity for what it calls responsible AI adoption, while Australia has directed foreign aid specifically toward supporting safe AI approaches among its Pacific neighbours. Peter Brimble, board chair of the AI Asia Pacific Institute, and policy researcher David Hua have both argued for a dedicated Pacific Islands AI Technical Assistance Facility, a standing body that would give island nations shared access to policy expertise and technical capacity none of them can fully build alone.
The stakes go beyond compliance paperwork. Without a regional mechanism to shape how AI gets deployed locally, Pacific nations risk becoming passive recipients of AI systems designed elsewhere, tools that may carry biases or assumptions poorly suited to Fijian, Papua New Guinean or other Pacific contexts, with no local legal or institutional structure in place to catch the mismatch before it causes harm.
