The Pacific Networks: How Digital Tides are transforming communities across the world’s largest Ocean

Across the world’s largest ocean, a decade of World Bank Group digital support is transforming the region: helping create jobs, strengthen economies, and unlock opportunities.

“Our ocean is our life,” says Swinston Siba, standing near the water in Kosrae, in the Federated States of Micronesia.

“The ocean gives us everything.”

At Lelu Marina, fishing boats come in with the day’s catch.

For years, selling that fish depended on who was nearby, who could be reached by phone, and who happened to pass through at the right time.

Now, when fishermen arrive, Swinston can post the catch online.

Customers see it almost immediately. Some begin arriving before the boats have even fully unloaded.

The World Bank Group is supporting digital transformation at scale across the globe, with a record US$6 billion digital lending portfolio across more than 60 projects in more than 100 countries.

For small states, where distance, small markets, high costs, and exposure to shocks can limit opportunity, digital access is increasingly central to resilience and long-term growth.

“With digital, everything is so easy. Everything is touch of a button.”

For Swinston, better connectivity helps move fish from boats to buyers. It helps local fishermen earn more. It helps a small island business reach people beyond the wharf and the island itself.

The same shift is beginning to show up in communities across the Pacific.

In today’s digital economy, connectivity is a foundation for jobs, resilience, better services, and inclusive growth.

As digital tools and artificial intelligence reshape how people live, learn, work, and do business, low- and middle-income countries cannot afford to fall further behind.

In the Pacific, with World Bank support, governments have been expanding connectivity across one of the most geographically challenging regions on earth.

Over the past decade, more than US$377 million in grants across 21 digital projects in 10 Pacific countries has helped build submarine cables and domestic fiber networks, strengthen regulation, open markets to competition, attract private investment, and extend faster, more affordable internet to communities once among the hardest to reach.

That partnership continues today, with six active digital projects across five countries, supporting digital access, infrastructure, and services in the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, and Samoa with another project recently completed in Tuvalu in December 2025.

The impact has been immense

In Tonga, broadband prices fell by up to 97 percent, while access expanded from around 2 percent to 64 percent over a decade. In Tuvalu, the country is on track for near-universal fiber coverage.

In Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), World Bank support has helped internet access grow more than twenty-fold, connecting a country spread across more than 600 islands.

In RMI, this work is improving essential services and opening pathways to new types of work and learning.

“Digital connectivity for the Marshall Islands is a game changer, especially for health and education. Given our dispersed population and isolation, it means better access, faster service, and greater inclusion.”

Malie Tarbwillin, Assistant Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Republic of the Marshall Islands

For families spread across the islands and atolls that make up the nation, reliable internet is not only improving services, it is opening new ways to study, work, start businesses, and participate in the economy.

Students in Marshall Islands increasingly have access to faster and cheaper internet to access new learning opportunities.

Better connectivity is helping small businesses reach new customers and markets.

Women’s advocacy groups are using digital tools to reach and support more women and girls, including those in remote communities.

In Federated States of Micronesia, more than 1,500 kilometers of new fiber-optic infrastructure is connecting communities to faster, lower-cost internet.

In FSM, entry-level fixed broadband prices fell by 99 percent between 2014 and 2025.

Students in Marshall Islands increasingly have access to faster and cheaper internet to access new learning opportunities.

A New Way to Reach Customers

On Pohnpei in FSM, clothing designer Acer Apis remembers when uploading a promotional video for his BRDFRT label could take most of a day.

“When we’re posting, it could take us a day to upload a three-gigabyte video,” he says.

For a small business trying to build a brand, that delay matters. It slows sales, limits marketing, and makes it harder for local creativity to travel beyond the island. With better internet, Acer’s designs can now reach much further.

“I can sell a shirt from this shop to anywhere in the world with the internet,” he says.

For Pacific entrepreneurs, digital access is opening doors that distance used to close.

A clothing label can reach overseas customers.

A marina can advertise fresh fish in real time.

A tourism business can take bookings online.

A grocery store owner can connect more easily with buyers, suppliers, and markets.

“I use the internet to buy my ink cartridges, office supplies, school supplies. I do my business online. Even my local value-added products, to send it over to off-island people or friends or anywhere.”

These are practical changes, but they go to the heart of local livelihoods.

In communities where formal jobs can be limited, digital tools are giving people more ways to earn, trade, promote their work, and stay connected to opportunity at home including for women in business and girls in education.

Learning and Services Closer to Home

For many Pacific families, education has often meant leaving home. Students have moved between islands, across countries, or overseas to access higher education and training.

That journey can open doors, but it can also bring cost, separation, and uncertainty.

In Marshall Islands, students are accessing more online resources, digital textbooks, and new ways to study. At the College of the Marshall Islands, improved connectivity is helping more students continue their education and prepare for work.

“More students are graduating and entering the workforce,” says College of the Marshall Islands student, Wilmer Joel. “It’s inspiring to see people contributing to the local economy.”

Digital learning is also helping people who may not have been able to study easily before, including people in remote communities and students (particularly women and girls), balancing family, work, and education.

The same is true for essential services.

In health care, stronger connectivity can support remote consultations, faster sharing of health information, improved records, better emergency response, and stronger links between outer island clinics and main hospitals.

In public services, it can help people access information, payments, documents, and support without long and costly travel.

For persons with disabilities, digital tools can also help reduce barriers to information, education, services, and participation in community life.

“The app will be helping us to locate persons with disabilities if there are any waves coming. It is easier for them to use the internet to apply for any kinds of jobs. I think the internet can make the world change for all persons with disabilities.

A Pacific-Led Digital Future

Across the region, Pacific governments are leading this transformation.

They are investing in infrastructure, improving regulation, expanding services, and working to ensure that digital access reaches beyond capital cities and main islands.

There is still a long way to go.

Many communities need more reliable access. Affordability remains a challenge. Skills will need to grow alongside infrastructure. Countries will also need continued investment to keep digital systems secure, inclusive, and able to support future jobs.

But the change already underway is real.