KINGSTON, Jamaica – Former Grenada prime minister, Dr. Keith Mitchell Wednesday said that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to the birth of new businesses as well as social dispensation for work and leisure.
Dr. Keith MitchellAddressing the opening of inaugural virtual four-day “Frontiers of Research in Caribbean Science and Technology (FORECAST) Conference 2022, Mitchell, who until June served as the CARICOM lead prime minister on Science and Technology, said that this new dispensation is enabled by information communication and technology (ICT) 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 greater development..
It is a joint initiative of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the University of Technology in Jamaica, 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 is creating 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 ICT 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applications and services,” he said, explaining that the digital divide “as we knew it several months ago is no longer applicable in this new scenario for regional development.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, noting that as economic and debt crises are manifested and energy and food prices escalated, 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 pose 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 that included 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 ICT 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 ICT space. The single ICT 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 ICT 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 ICT space will be the appropriate framework for the region to counter the risks associated with cybersecurity threats and digital crime in general. The single ICT space will be critical to the implementation of the (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to forge the future that we want under the sustainable development construct.”
Mitchell told the conference that the ICT vision must be anchored with the region working together towards the resilient Caribbean within the framework of a single ICT 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 as well as the effect of gruesome crime scenes on the personal and professional lives of forensic crime scene investigators In Jamaica.
