Jamaica : It is now well established and widely accepted that economic growth is linked to investment in science, technology and innovation. The best examples are from developing countries like Singapore and Brazil which, in the last twenty years, have leveraged all three to transform the economic and social landscape of their countries. Jamaica, with its growing poverty, brought on by the increasing debt burden, high cost of energy and low productivity, must urgently chart a new course to stimulate sustainable socio-economic growth through the advancement of science, technology and innovation.
Recently, I spoke in Boston at an annual science and technology (S&T) conference sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The particular session in which I was involved focused on science and technology diasporas and S&T diplomacy. It struck me that I was the only person from the English-speaking Caribbean among the speakers, although Africa, the UK, Africa and Asia were represented. I included in my remarks some of the many scientific research endeavours in the Caribbean and was sure to mention Caribbean S&T diaspora who are well placed and blazing scientific trails in the US.
Then, only a few weeks later, the scientific community was ablaze with news of the scientist who led the team of researchers who found the “cure” for HIV AIDS in infants. And, wouldn't you know it, Guyana-born Dr Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, shines light on the contributions to science that Caribbean diasporans are making.
In IT, it is not widely known that inventor John Henry Thompson, a player in Silicon Valley, is from Jamaica. A chief scientist at Macromedia, he developed Lingo programming, a scripting language that is used to create flash and shockwave programs that now are prevalent in video games, web design, animation, and graphics.However, with all the ground breaking work in the Caribbean region, veritable science and technology stars in the diaspora, science and technology still have not been embraced and put into practice by policymakers as a way to solve the region's problems. Recently, I spoke with one of the Caribbean leading research scientists, Dr Marvadeen Singh-Wilmot, to get a handle on this critically important subject.
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