KINGSTON, Jamaica– Former Grenada prime minister Dr. Keith Mitchell Wednesday said that the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has led to the birth of new businesses and social dispensation for work and leisure.
Addressing the opening of the inaugural virtual four-day “Frontiers of Research in Caribbean Science and Technology (FORECAST) Conference 2022, Mitchell, who until June served as the Caribbean Community (C.A.R.I.C.O.M.) lead prime minister on Science and Technology, said that this new dispensation is enabled by information communication and technology (I.C.T.) applications and services which has increased the use of digital platforms for communication like the one being used to host the conference.
“This has indeed provided a cheaper and more convenient form of connectivity. The pandemic has given cause to reset and reboot the regional development agenda,” said Mitchell, his island’s Opposition Leader, in delivering the feature address.
The virtual conference will highlight science and technology as a pillar for regional transformation through its provision of new thought, discourse, and foundational knowledge and skills, as well as by driving innovation, entrepreneurship, and resilience in the pursuit of more excellent development.
It is a joint initiative of the University of the West Indies (U.W.I.) and the University of Technology in Jamaica. It will be held under the theme “Science & Technology: a D.R.I.V.E.R. of transformation.”
Mitchell told the conference that the new environment creates new opportunities to reshape the regional development paradigm.
“We must now re-engineer government systems and processes, the education system, private sector, and civil society infrastructure and systems, and the whole of society approach with infused I.C.T. and science and technology-enabled applications and services,” he said, explaining that the digital divide “as we knew it several months ago is no longer applicable in this new scenario for regional development.
“Everyone needs to be digitally enabled to participate in the new dispensation. Sisters and brothers, coupled with the ongoing pandemic, the global community also faces geopolitical tensions and conflicts that further disrupt the supply chain and negatively affect the prospects for recovery,” said. Mitchell noted that as economic and debt crises manifest and energy and food prices escalate, these changes have brought further socio-economic challenges to the region.
“We must remember that even as we seek to recover from the pandemic and the economic and social decline, unprecedented warming of the global climate continues, which poses a direct and existential threat to the region.
“The confluence of these issues has added increasing layers of complexity and difficulty to regional development challenges,” he told the participants, including top regional scientists and researchers.
He said the new dispensation underscores the need to urgently deal with these changes and to escalate the process of building economic, social, and environmental resilience into regional development strategies.
“I argue that the platform for the resilient economy lies with mainstreaming I.C.T. and science and technology in the regional development strategy through the digital transformation of the economies,” said Mitchell, adding that he is convinced that digitization of the Caribbean is the only way to the future and the only pathway forward.
“It is against this backdrop that the region must embrace and implement the concept of the single I.C.T. space. The single I.C.T. space is critical for forging the environment and technological renaissance necessary for the digital economy to drive economic growth and social transformation in the region.
“The single I.C.T. space will allow for the development and proliferation of regional ICT-related content, the harmonization of legislative and regulatory frameworks, the encouragement of digital literacy and entrepreneurship, telecommunications reform and the elimination of roaming charges, sectoral digital leadership, and overall regional digital citizenry.
“The single I.C.T. space will be the appropriate framework for the region to counter the risks associated with cybersecurity threats and digital crime in general. The single I.C.T. space will be critical to implementing the (U.N.) Sustainable Development Goals (S.D.G.s) and to forge the future that we want under the sustainable development construct.”
Mitchell told the conference that the I.C.T. vision must be anchored with the region working together towards the resilient Caribbean within the framework of a single I.C.T. space.
The conference will discuss a wide range of issues, including a proposal for the commercial production of essential oils in Tobago using supercritical fluid extraction, bioprospecting and biopiracy In The Caribbean, and the effect of gruesome crime scenes on the personal and professional lives of forensic crime scene investigators In Jamaica.
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