Editorial | CARICOM needs research and development plan

Last week’s report of efforts by a cross-discipline group of The University of the West Indies (UWI) lecturers to develop software to help children improve their reading and comprehension is the kind of news of which there is not enough.

It also, again, raises questions about the financing of research and development (R&D) in the Caribbean, which ought to be of priority for both national governments and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

The problem of education is perhaps more profound in Jamaica, where a third of children, as the Patterson-led commission on education transformation highlighted, leave primary school illiterate, and nearly six in 10 struggle with comprehension. But it is also a matter of concern for other countries in the region.

The education deficit at the primary level persists at high school, contributing to generally poor educational outcomes. In Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate examinations, for example, fewer than a fifth of Jamaican students pass five subjects, including maths and English, at a single sitting.

So, seeking creative ways to address the Caribbean’s education crisis makes sense. And attempting to apply digital technology to the solution is in keeping with the global trajectory of innovation.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

In the five years to 2020, the World Intellectual Property Organization noted in a recent report, digital technology innovation expanded 172 per cent faster than all other patents. Artificial intelligence patents, over the period, jumped 718 per cent, followed by Big Data (699 per cent), cloud computing (122 per cent), autonomous systems (109 per cent) and the Internet of Things (81 per cent).

What Dr Andre Coy and his colleagues at the UWI’s Mona and St Augustine campuses are working on is “a speech-enabled, autonomous reading tutor, to be used to close the gaps in reading education”, per this newspaper’s report on the project.

“Because our student-teacher ratios are extremely high and what is often needed is individualised attention, which teachers are not able to give … technology is the solution to that,” said Dr Coy, who teaches science and technology at Mona.

Notably, Dr Coy and his colleagues are funding their R&D effort primarily from US$50,000 in prize money they won at a learning engineering tools competition in the United States.

There is not much money available in the Caribbean for R&D and innovation. While hard data is scarce, most estimates put R&D spending in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago at around 0.6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), and less in other CARICOM member states. In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries as a group, it is closer to 2.7 per cent of GDP.

China, the world’s second-largest economy and a fast-advancing innovator, last year spent 2.44 per cent of its GDP on R&D. America spends close to three per cent.

China’s aggressive focus on innovation shows in its applications for patents – more than 1.85 million in 2021, or 46.6 per cent of worldwide applications. That is more than double the 491,843 of its nearest competitor, the United States, which accounted for 17.4 per cent of all applications. Our region – Latin America and the Caribbean – reported only 54,800 patent applications in 2021, and but a handful of those would have come from the Caribbean.

EXPENSIVE

Research and development efforts can be expensive and time-consuming. And, often with primary research, there is no certainty of an economically viable product or innovation reaching the market.

That is why this newspaper has consistently called for regional partnerships to advance innovation, such as our suggestion at the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic that The UWI seek R&D partnerships with institutions like Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute, or others of that country’s universities, to advance research on medicines for the coronavirus.

If CARICOM is to make the economic breakthrough that has for so long eluded the community, it cannot continue to operate on the basis that R&D and innovation are beyond the scope of small economies like its own. That is, to, without effort, cede competitive advantage to others, fall further behind in the new digitally driven global economy, and continue to be merely a consumer of other people’s innovation.

The community’s leaders must therefore reset the region’s focus on innovation, applying to R&D the same energy they showed earlier this year in advancing a regional programme for food security.

Similar to the agri-investment forum hosted in August to advance the food initiative, CARICOM should invite the region’s private sector to be part of an R&D and innovation pledging initiative in support of regional research institutions. But the universities and firms do not have to wait on governments to seek each other out to fund research. Indeed, we are surprised that no regional telecoms company is involved with the UWI research group in developing the reading software, which could translate to an app on subscribers’ mobile phones.