Guadeloupe, a land of innovation

Our archipelago exhibits an innovation-oriented ecosystem, already efficient and bound to develop and strengthen in the coming years. Many local economic players stand out, indeed, due to their inventiveness and dynamism. These multifaceted and innovative initiatives are on the rise in various sectors: ICTs, energy, healthcare, as well as more traditional industries such as agriculture or construction and civil engineering.

They will keep on increasing given the population’s growing needs, structures and incentives — which together form a factors set propitious to innovation.

Thus, based on its innovation support policy, the regional authority propelled, in 2007, the creation of competitive cluster Synergîle. Its mission: favouring synergies among businesses, research institutions and training centres in view of generating collaborative and innovative projects in two activity fields:

• renewable and alternative energies
• materials and constructions adapted to tropical, insular environments subject to risks.

From 2008 to 2012, Synergîle helped 80 projects and rallies about sixty members, established or operating in Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guyana.

With exceptional natural resources, important infrastructures and schemes as well as multiple, dynamic and ambitious actors, Guadeloupe has all the necessary assets characteristic of an innovative land endowed with a bright future.

In order to reinforce our archipelago’s attractiveness and competitiveness, the Guadeloupe Region fosters all sorts of innovation, along with research. For they are key to stimulate entrepreneurship, increase competitiveness among businesses and, from a more general perspective, strengthen the territory’s economic development.

The Guadeloupe Region is well aware that innovation as well as research are vital for building a future filled with great perspectives for our territory as a whole. As a result, the regional authority supports these main axes in view of preparing the future.

Consistently with the European Commission’s wishes, the Guadeloupe Regional Council committed, ever since 2007, to diagnosing the territory’s strengths and weaknesses as far as innovation and research are concerned. Interested parties were integrated to this approach, which helped establish a much needed situational analysis, but also provide relevant proposals.

Moreover, ever eager to identify the best strategy on the matter, the Guadeloupe Regional Council organised Regional Research, Innovation and Technology Transfer Assemblies (ARRITT) in November 2009.

Thanks to this concertation process involving all preponderant interested parties, the Guadeloupe Regional Council devised a Regional Innovation Strategy (SRI) that proves ambitious and willing to foster a strong dynamic.

The regional authority thus holds in its hands an efficient tool for implementing one of the main lines of actions comprised in the Regional Economic Development Scheme (SRDE) adopted in 2006: converting innovation into a pillar for developing new activities with a high added value.

Thanks to numerous assets in terms of resources and infrastructures, Guadeloupe asserts itself as a land of innovation, favourable to the spread of digital economy. This fast-growing sector offers innovative and practical tools applicable to many other activities. It partakes to a large extent in our territory’s vitality.

Consequently, the Guadeloupe Regional Council aims at helping digital economy develop by actively striving to expand Information and Communication Technologies infrastructures across the territory. It also provides digital businesses with an efficient support scheme.

Highly dynamic, the digital economy is associated with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Relevant to numerous industries, it gives businesses crucial time-saving, cost-reducing tools, especially for communicating with their customers. It thus contributes to stimulating and developing the local economic fabric.

Aware of its positive impacts, the Guadeloupe Regional Council wishes to develop the digital economy.

In that view, the regional authority relies on its Digital Development Plan (PDEN). This key paper was devised based on a sectoral study conducted in 2008 with local professionals and after consulting with various public stakeholders. 

The PDEN lists eleven lines of action meant to reinforce and develop the ICT sector in Guadeloupe:

• Establishing a certified directory of ICT businesses
• Proposing collective actions benefiting ICT businesses
• Widening ICT section coverage by ICT businesses
• Creating a technological and usage watch department
• Organising a seminar devoted to innovation
• Launching a regional call for projects targeting innovation in the ICT sector
• Indexing existing ICT-relevant course offers at the regional scale
• Helping develop new courses
• Mapping existing aids and mechanisms aimed at ICT players
• Supporting and improving the ICT cluster project and supporting ICT projects incubation.
• Creating a web-based portal on Guadeloupe’s ICT sector.

Multifaceted, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are becoming more prominent in Guadeloupeans’s daily lives. Individuals, firms or even public services make increasing use of these tools which aim at informing, entertaining but also gaining in efficiency and even, competitiveness.

A land of innovation, our archipelago already has significant digital infrastructures. Nonetheless, ICT expansion entails growing needs. The Guadeloupe Region thus chose to prioritise digital planning with the aim of providing the entire population with access to high speed internet by 2025, at a reasonable price.

Guadeloupeans are fond of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which they use on a daily basis for various purposes: accessing information, private and public services, entertainment, facilitating their work or innovating. These tools contribute to both the archipelago’s economic development and the population’s fulfilment.

Optimal usage of ICTs generally requires access to high, or even very high speed internet. Yet, due to our archipelago’s specificities, certain areas experience a shortfall in this field (white and grey areas). Therefore, developing digital infrastructures is paramount.

So that all Guadeloupeans may have access to quality internet, the Guadeloupe Region relies on its Coherence Strategy for Digital Development (SCORAN). Embraced in 2012, this paper defines the main strands to be implemented in order to reach the goals of the national “very high speed” programme.

The regional authority also adopted in October 2013, a Territorial Plan for Digital Development (SDTAN), with the aim of achieving digital coverage for the entire territory by 2022.