Solomon Islands
GDP per capita to 2060, by scenario
Constant-rate scenario path; the 2060 endpoint levels are illustrative, not forecasts.
Factor profile
Most workers farm small plots, and exports are mainly crops.
How this economy meets AI
Today’s production, workforce and automation baseline — context for the scenarios, outside the AGI Growth Index.
Where output comes from (% of GDP)
Where people work (% of employment)
Informal employment
Current automation exposure
Several parts of the economy could transmit AI’s effects. The pace depends on adoption by firms, connectivity and movement of workers between sectors.
This country is not covered by the Global Automation Atlas’s public country file; its task-level exposure work for other countries is at automationatlas.org.
Sources: World Bank WDI; ILOSTAT; Global Automation Atlas (Garg, Crosta & Baier, 2026). The latest available year is shown for each measure; vintages differ, so shares may not sum to 100.
Where Solomon Islands starts
Solomon Islands enters the AGI era in the high-risk group: countries cut off from the AI supply chain, with state capacity too thin to turn AI into growth. The scores are stark. Compute and energy access, AI diffusion and cyber resilience all sit near the floor, at 1, 1 and 1.2 out of 5. The one bright number is catch-up headroom at 4.7. The country sits far enough below the frontier that, in theory, there is a long way to climb. Real constraints hold it down. This is a $2bn economy built on logging, gold from Gold Ridge, tuna and aid. The 2021 Honiara riots and a contested pivot between Canberra and Beijing sit behind a geopolitics score of 2. At $2,086 per person, it is lower-middle-income. Ten-year trend growth is 1.4%. Fast connectivity arrived only in 2019, with the Coral Sea Cable.
The three paths
These are simulations, not forecasts. The Modest path is the baseline; the two AGI scenarios fork from it. Under the Modest scenario, AI stays an ordinary technology. Solomon Islands would hold its trend: 1.4% growth a year, 137th of 157. Under Gradual takeoff, growth would rise slowly over two decades and reach 2.8% a year around 2045. That doubles the economy in about 25 years, but ranks only 150th. Under Fast takeoff, growth would reach 2.2% a year from the early 2030s, and the rank would slip further, to 153rd. That is the striking part. A faster world leaves Solomon Islands lower, not higher, because it rewards the compute and frontier access the country does not have. Both AGI paths beat the no-AI trend, but neither is transformative. Politics could slow or redirect any of them. How Solomon Islanders and their leaders respond to transformative AI is a variable the model holds constant.
How you would know which world you are in
The scenarios look almost identical until about 2030. In all three, the late 2020s add only fractions of a point to growth. So watch leading indicators, not GDP, and watch them live. Three global signals matter most. First, whether the METR task horizon curve keeps doubling every four to five months through 2027–28; METR publishes it at metr.org. Second, whether frontier lab revenue and capital spending keep compounding; Epoch AI tracks both at epoch.ai. Third, whether growth in the ten to twenty most-ready economies — the United States and China above all — breaks above trend in the early 2030s. Double-digit growth there within a couple of years of 2030 would signal a fast world; a point or two above trend by the mid-2030s a gradual one; a fade back to trend a modest one. Solomon Islands' own tells would come earlier than GDP: mobile 4G reach and prices from Our Telekom and bmobile, spare capacity on the Coral Sea Cable, and remittances from seasonal workers in Australia and New Zealand.
If growth goes explosive
Explosive is the wrong word here. Even under Fast takeoff, Solomon Islands would grow 2.2% a year, and under Gradual 2.8%. Both are modest. The frontier would compound near 20% in a gradual world and close to 40% in a fast one. The region's median, set by Australia and New Zealand, would run at about 6%. Solomon Islands would fall behind both. Its best case doubles the economy in roughly 25 years, so a child born today would reach her mid-twenties before national income doubles. The mix would stay much as it is: fish, timber, gold and aid. A young, growing population (demographics 3.1) is an asset only if there are jobs at home. Faster growth and higher wages would ease the pull to work abroad, not reverse it. The honest downside: the country reaches the world through a single undersea cable and connectivity it rents, not owns. That link can be repriced or throttled from elsewhere, and its few skilled workers can be drawn to richer neighbours. The hedge is backup connectivity and reasons for talent to stay. Either way, the pressure would fall on Honiara's ministries, thin customs and revenue offices, provincial administrations and courts.
What Solomon Islands can do now
Three levers follow from the scores, and two pay off whether or not AGI arrives. The first is AI diffusion, at the floor at 1. Basic digital skills, AI literacy and putting the handful of core government services online cost little and help under every scenario. This is a no-regret move. The second is build speed and basic energy, at 1.4 and 1. Many Solomon Islanders still lack reliable power. Expanding generation and clearing the permits to build it strengthens the economy in any world, and it is the input any later digital ambition would need. That too is no-regret. The third lever is the bet: attracting hyperscale compute by packaging power, land and fast permits. It barely moves growth if AI stays ordinary, and for a $2bn economy on a remote archipelago it is a long shot even in a fast world. Papua New Guinea offers a nearer model — it passed a Digital Government Act and is rolling out a national digital ID to move services online. A cautious government in Honiara can act on the two no-regret levers today and lose nothing. Open the atlas's policy editor to test how each score changes the path.
Use the policy editor to test how different factor scores change Solomon Islands’s modeled path. The roadmap builder below can then incorporate those targets into a 1,000-day planning prompt.
Drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, from the atlas’s data and an editorial template set by the author.
Create a 1000-day AGI and growth roadmap prompt
This prompt can be used with Claude, ChatGPT or an open-weight model hosted on your institution’s systems. It includes the atlas material for Solomon Islands: the country brief, economic structure, region, archetype and global scenarios. It instructs the model to ask for local information, use existing strategies and the political calendar, and preserve the atlas’s interpretation rules. The prompt is assembled in your browser; the information entered here is not sent elsewhere.
1 · Read the brief → 2 · Set targets in the policy editor → 3 · Generate and copy the prompt → 4 · Run it with an approved model, with high reasoning effort and web access where permitted
Instructions are generated in the selected language; the data annex remains in English. Translations are machine-drafted, and corrections from native speakers are welcome through the contact links on the start page.