Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley
COVID-19 and its impact on our tourism dependent economies means the time is now for regional governments to implement disruptive and forward thinking programme concepts and policies that fast-track the development of a Caribbean technology economy.
This is the view of Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley who was one of the featured speakers during the official launch of The Pivot Event, a five day virtual gathering of pioneering thinkers in the Caribbean region. Organised by the Inter-American Development Bank, the event is expected to harness big ideas into a manifesto for driving Caribbean transformation.
Prime Minister Mottley made the point that it is only when the cultural confidence is increased and the power of our creative imagination is maximised will one be able to build technologies that unlock our region’s true potential.
“We will begin to see that because we are surrounded on all sides by the sea. Our ocean economy is prime for expansion. We will begin to see that our lack of scale steers us to focus on producing quality rather than quantity, thus enhancing our high value manufacturing sector and what ought to be a propensity for research and development.”
“We would also see that the constant threat of hurricanes makes us global experts in the business of climate resilience. In the immortal words of that great Trinidadian luminary CLR James – Nobody knows what the Caribbean population is capable of. Nobody has ever attempted to find out.”
“I say the duty is ours together to pivot right now, to find out what that Caribbean person is about and what capacity our region is capable of.”
The Prime Minister pointed out that for too long the region has been risk averse and afraid to go after their “moonshot”, which is a radical or ambitious idea.
“Our region in an age of rapid and bold digital innovation globally has been slow to digitise and timid to innovate.”
Prime Minister Mottley noted that without the safety net afforded to other countries, the region has been hesitant to strive to be the best and first in this region. “Our governments, our financial institutions, our schools, our churches and our agencies, have been regrettably too hostile to risk and resistant to new actions and new ideas.”
The Prime Minister said this is unconscionable in a region that has produced the likes of CLR James, Errol Barrow, Brian Lara, V.S Naipaul, Usain Bolt, Viv Richards, Shirley Chisolm and Rihanna to name a few.
“We are a region that has already solved some of the most difficult of the so-called developed world’s problems with our universal education. People don’t talk about it. Our universal education, our universal health care, our stable political system...our freedom of choice and social partnerships are hardly ever mentioned.”
“We are a place of critical creative thinkers, we like to ‘buse one another and we like to use colourful language. We are revolutionaries in our own way. We are inventors, artists and pioneers. We have already produced the best and we have already been the first. But why do we resist scale? Why do we not understand that scale is at the heart of transformation. How as a collective can we not put our own perspective and flare on this digital revolution. Simply put- how can we pivot,” Prime Minister Mottley queried.
She opined that the future of the world and by extension the future of the Caribbean is largely in technology. “True prosperity and transformation... will not come from Caribbean technologies until we have the cultural confidence that Peter Minshall exhibited when he put stilt walkers at the Barcelona Olympiad.”
“We must have the cultural confidence to develop technology for our own kind on a timeline that plays to our strengths and which captures the imagination of our own people. We must become a developer of ideas and technologies. That allows us to overcome the everyday disadvantages of being a small island developing state. That will allow us to overcome our small population, our small economy our vulnerability to natural disasers and our very difficult history of slavery and colonialism,” Prime Minister Mottley said. (JH)