Bahamas News
BAHAMAS: Teachers Key to Moving to Digital
#Freeport, GB, November 17, 2018 – Bahamas – Teachers will be key to the success in ‘digitalizing’ learning institutions in the country, said Minister of Education, the Hon. Jeffrey Lloyd during the Grand Bahama Technology Summit on Friday, November 16, 2018.
Being held under the theme, “The Future is Now,” the summit was officially opened by Prime Minister, Dr. the Most Hon. Hubert Minnis, on Wednesday. The event is being held at the Grand Lucayan and ends today.
Minister Lloyd further stated that the government’s education system is made up of 172 school campuses and 60 satellite buildings that provide support for schools all over the country’s islands and cays, and each island deserves the same quality of education and opportunities as those in the urban centres of Nassau and Freeport.
There are approximately 50,000 students from pre-k to grade 12 and 5,000 in tertiary institutions, along with about 25,000 in the private sector. It is challenging, said Minister Lloyd, to provide quality education with a cohort of between 4 to 6,000 teachers, especially specialized teachers in the areas of math and the sciences.
The government started the digitization of the educational system as soon as they came to office in 2017. He said, that in this day’s environment, the most effective tool for ensuring closure of the gap between performance and expection is technology.
The Minister of Education said that on September 9, 2018, the government formed a relationship with BTC and Cable Bahamas to provide fibre optic infrastructure to the 172 schools.
“This is a three-year, $17 million initiative; this year, we expect to spend approximately $8 million in this particular exercise.
“You will recognize that the intention is that we want every single school campus to be a smart school. That is, fully integrated utilizing the latest technology particularly as it relates to our far flung islands where we are not able, year after year, to provide those critical teachers in specialized areas — once again, like I indicated, in math and the sciences.”
The accomplish this, he continued, it will be done in phases. In the first phase, all districts will be linked with the fibre optic capability so that the schools and buildings will have full internet/Wi-Fi capacity. To date, many schools do not have full internet or Wi-Fi capability.
“So this fibre optic capability is going to provide internet access and Wi-Fi network — what we call the United 
Unified Threat Management Security Solution — and will also give those campuses, those teachers, those institutions, those districts the ability for students to come with their own devices.”
Phase two has already begun, continued the Minister, in that pre-primary and primary school students are receiving tablets and laptops. Some 29,000 devices will be distributed over the next 12 to 18 months.
Phase three, or EMIS, Education Management Information System is the information that will enable personnel at the Ministry of Education the ability to “recognize, understand, manipulate as necessary and to plan effectively what the requirements are for our institutions, our school systems going forward next year, next five years, next 25 years.”
The system will also permit parents and stakeholders to engage with the educational system and allow the Minister himself to know what is going on with any given school, classroom or student and provide reports on where the Ministry is with regard to the delivery of education.
“This process will facilitate student enrolment, engagement with parents, and the opportunity for administration and administrators to know precisely what is going on throughout the system.”
Minister Lloyd said that with a population of over 400,000, the country has many people who may not have completed high school, and there are some adults who may want to further their education: for those people, he continued, this system will give them the opportunity.
Referred to as MOOC — Massive Open Online Courses, it will give people the opportunity to finish high school as well as those who feel they need to upgrade their skills.
“What we have found in our system is that we are introducing a tool with which many adults are not comfortable, I’m talking about teachers. They do not have the ease, the facility, that our younger people have and so they are, quite honestly, afraid.”
He continued, “At the centre of this transformation is the teacher. In fact, I prophet to you this. It is us older folks that need to close the gap with the younger children that we are teaching. Our three and four-year-olds are coming to school already somewhat technologically savvy.
“[At] The heart of this transformation in digitizing our educational system — we can lay down all the fibre optic we want… but if our teachers do not come along, and in fact get ahead of the curve a little bit, then the system is going to fail.”
Many of the teachers in the system have not become comfortable with technology, and so there is now a “systematic sustained transition” so that teachers can move from analog to digital. He continued, “This for us is the most fundamental objective and process that we must undertake, and that’s not a tomorrow exercise or a next year or next five years. We’ve got to do that at the Mabel Walker Institute and other training environments, right now.
“The success of this roll out, this 21st century experience is dependent upon the teachers.”
While once the teachers stood at the blackboard and taught the class, it is no longer the case he said. Students are no longer taught to regurgitate, but solve problems, and teachers are the facilitators of this.
By Robyn Adderley
Release: BIS
DIGITIZING THE EDUCATION SYSTEM – Minister of Education, the Hon. Jeffrey Lloyd, told attendees of the 2nd Grand Bahama Technology Summit, November 16, 2018 that the government is in the process of digitizing the entire educational system in the country so that all students have access to the same quality of education. (BIS Photo/Andrew Miller)
ROBOTICS DEMONSTRATION – Students of the Bishop Michael Eldon High School, making up Northern Bahamas SECME, held a Vex Robotics demonstration during the 2nd Grand Bahama Technology Summit on Friday, November 16, 2018. (BIS Photo/Andrew Miller)
PM: Project delivers on promise and invests in youth, sports and national development
GRAND BAHAMA, The Bahamas — Calling it the fulfillment of a major commitment to the island, Prime Minister Philip Davis led the official groundbreaking for the Grand Bahama Aquatic Centre, a facility the government says will transform sports development and create new opportunities for young athletes.
Speaking at the Grand Bahama Sports Complex on February 12, the Prime Minister said the project represents more than bricks and mortar
— it is an investment in people, national pride and long-term economic activity. The planned complex will feature a modern 50-metre competition pool, designed to meet international standards for training and regional and global swim meets. Davis said the facility will give Bahamian swimmers a home capable of producing world-class performance while also providing a space for community recreation, learn-to-swim programmes and water safety training.
He noted that Grand Bahama has long produced outstanding athletes despite limited infrastructure and said the new centre is intended to correct that imbalance, positioning the island as a hub for aquatic sports and sports tourism.
The Prime Minister also linked the development to the broader national recovery and revitalisation of Grand Bahama, describing the project as part of a strategy to expand opportunities for young people, create jobs during construction and stimulate activity for small businesses once operational.
The Aquatic Centre, he said, stands as proof that promises made to Grand Bahama are being delivered.
The project is expected to support athlete development, attract competitions, and provide a safe, modern environment for residents to access swimming and water-based programmes for generations to come.
Angle by Deandrea Hamilton. Built with ChatGPT (AI). Magnetic Media — CAPTURING LIFE.
The Bahamas, February 15, 2026 – For the better part of three years, Bahamians have been told that major Afreximbank financing would help transform access to capital, rebuild infrastructure and unlock economic growth across the islands. The headline figures are large. The signing ceremonies are high profile. The language is ambitious. What remains far harder to see is the measurable impact in the daily lives of the people those announcements are meant to serve.
The Government’s push to secure up to $100 million from Afreximbank for roughly 200 miles of Family Island roads dates back to 2025. In
its February 11 disclosure, the bank outlined a receivables-discounting facility — a structure that allows a contractor to be paid early once work is completed, certified and invoiced, with the Government settling the bill later. It is not cash placed into the economy upfront. It does not, by itself, build a single mile of road. Every dollar depends on work first being delivered and approved.
The wider framework has been described as support for “climate-resilient and trade-enhancing infrastructure,” a phrase that, in practical terms, should mean projects that lower the cost of doing business, move people and goods faster, and keep the economy functioning. But for communities, that promise becomes real only when the projects are named, the standards are defined and a clear timeline is given for when work will begin — and when it will be finished.
Bahamians have seen this moment before.
In 2023, a $30 million Afreximbank facility for the Bahamas Development Bank was hailed as a breakthrough that would expand access to financing for local enterprise. It worked in one immediate and measurable way: it encouraged businesses to apply. Established, revenue-generating Bahamian companies responded to the call, prepared plans, and entered a process they believed had been capitalised to support growth. The unanswered question is how much of that capital has reached the private sector in a form that allowed those businesses to expand, hire and generate new economic activity.
Because development is not measured in the size of announcements.
It is measured in loans disbursed, projects completed and businesses expanded.
The pattern is becoming difficult to ignore. In June 2024, when Afreximbank held its inaugural Caribbean Annual Meetings in Nassau,
Grand Bahama was presented as the future home of an Afro-Caribbean marketplace said to carry tens of millions of dollars in investment. What was confirmed at that stage was a $1.86 million project-preparation facility — funding for studies and planning to make the development bankable, not construction financing. The larger build-out remains dependent on additional approvals, land acquisition and further capital.
This distinction — between financing announced and financing that produces visible, measurable outcomes — is now at the centre of the national conversation.
Because while the numbers grow larger on paper, entrepreneurs still describe access to capital as out of reach, and communities across the Family Islands are still waiting to see where the work will start.
And in an economy where stalled growth translates into lost opportunity, rising frustration and real social consequences, the gap between promise and delivery is no longer a communications issue.
It is an inability to convert announcements into outcomes.
Angle by Deandrea Hamilton. Built with ChatGPT (AI). Magnetic Media — CAPTURING LIFE.
A hardline strategy that reduced murders, gunfire, and collateral deaths
The Bahamas, February 8, 2026 – What happens when police stop routinely granting bail to high-risk suspects and aggressively execute outstanding warrants? In The Bahamas, the answer in 2025 was fewer murders, fewer gunshots, and safer communities.
The Royal Bahamas Police Force arrested 4,337 individuals on outstanding warrants last year, ensuring suspects were brought directly before the courts instead of being released back onto the streets. At the same time, police significantly curtailed the use of police bail for high-risk and repeat offenders, particularly those already entangled in violent disputes.
Police Commissioner Shanta Knowles said the shift was informed by hard lessons from previous years. Intelligence reviews showed that
many homicide victims were not random targets, but men already wanted by law enforcement and — critically — by other criminals. When released on bail, those individuals often became targets themselves, triggering retaliatory shootings that spilled into neighbourhoods, roadways and public spaces.
By keeping high-risk suspects in custody pending court appearances, police say they disrupted that cycle — removing both potential offenders and potential victims from the streets.
The impact was stark. Murders declined by 31 percent in 2025, falling from 120 in 2024 to 83, the largest percentage decrease in homicides since national tracking began in 1963 and the lowest murder count in nearly two decades.
Police leaders say the strategy also reduced the collateral damage that had increasingly alarmed communities. Innocent residents had been caught in “sprays of gunfire” as targeted attacks unfolded in residential areas, at traffic stops, and in public settings.
Gun-violence indicators reflected the change. Gunshot reports fell by 35 percent, while incidents detected by ShotSpotter technology declined by 29 percent, confirming that fewer shots were being fired across the country.
“Gunshots ringing out and cutting through our peaceful paradise were down remarkably,” Commissioner Knowles said, attributing the improvement to decisive enforcement, tighter bail practices, and sustained pressure on offenders.
Police also intensified enforcement against breach of bail conditions, charging and detaining more suspects than in any previous reporting period. Officers say the approach removed the opportunity for repeat offending while matters were before the courts.
Police leadership said the results go beyond statistics. By limiting bail for high-risk suspects and executing warrants at scale, the strategy saved lives, protected bystanders, and restored confidence in public safety.
In 2025, fewer people were hunted, fewer bullets were fired, and fewer families were left grieving — a shift police say was no accident, but the result of deliberate, hardline choices.
Angle by Deandrea Hamilton. Built with ChatGPT (AI). Magnetic Media — CAPTURING LIFE.
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