About the 8th GRD 2024

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight the urgent need for progress towards transformative innovation and disruption to resolve the region’s structural problems and shortcomings by reorienting the production and services structures towards knowledge-intensive sectors with capacities to meet growing levels of demand and employment.

Achieving this requires a seismic shift in thinking and institutional organization as well as new interconnections that add value, innovation and technology to contribute to the development of sectors and activities that can catalyse our economy and society.

It is against this backdrop that the theme “Creative Disruption and Innovation - Pathways for Transformative Change and Sustainable Growth” has been crafted for the 8th Annual Growth and Resilience Dialogue (GRD).  The two-day conference will be held on Thursday, 11 April and Friday, 12 April 2024 at the Sir Cecil Jacobs Auditorium, ECCB, Basseterre, St. Kitts. Online access will be provided via a designated Zoom conference platform and live streams on ECCB’s Facebook and YouTube channels, as well as platforms of collaborating institutions.

Join us in-person or online for an exciting two days exploring the roadmap to creative disruption and innovation.

Click link to register: Webinar Registration - Zoom

An attractive prize valued EC$2,700 for one early bird registrant.

In addition to a must-attend panel discussion on how to foster a dynamic innovation ecosystem in the Caribbean, Day One of The Dialogue will engage attendees in two (2) insightful masterclasses: 

1. Design Thinking – A Creative Approach to Problem Solving; and 
2. Strategies for Innovation. 

Discussions on how entrepreneurs can move from local to global as well as live AI demonstrations in health care, agriculture, education, finance, entrepreneurship and the creative arts, will dominate the focus on Day 2.

The objectives of the Growth and Resilience Dialogue include, but are not limited to the following:

1. Convening of a high-level meeting of the key strategic partners and influencers on issues that contribute to building sustainable economic success.
2. Sharing presentations from key social partners and specialists, that can contribute to policy formulation and advance resilience and transformation initiatives.
3. Development of networks at the national, regional and international levels that can advance the region’s transformation agenda.
4. Catalyzing research that can redound to the benefit of resilience and transformation initiatives in the ECCU/OECS.

As part of the initiative to forge consensus on a plan of action for addressing growth, competitiveness and employment in the ECCU, an Annual Growth Forum with social partners has been institutionalized, with the first forum hosted on 1 March 2017 at the ECCB Headquarters in St Kitts and Nevis. The Growth and Resilience Dialogue (GRD), has been successfully held to present date, in partnership with the OECS Commission, The World Bank and The UWI (which became a partner in 2021). The Dialogue has provided a platform for sharing analyses, experiences, lessons learned, and innovative solutions based on domestic and global trends to address economic and financial fragility and build lasting resilience in the OECS region.  The target audience for the GRD, which was exclusively virtual in 2021 and 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, includes representatives of member governments, public and private sectors, official opposition parties and the wider public. 

Thematic areas around which The Dialogue has been centered in the past are as follow: