Science and technology pillars may hold the keys to the successful engineering of a lasting economic turn-around in Barbados.
And two prominent Barbadian academics, Dr. Cardinal Warde, an eminent engineering professor at the world famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Boston, and Dr. Alvin Holder, an associate professor in Virginia’s Old Dominion University’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry who hold that view, are convinced the twin disciplines, if pursued with clarity and aggression in their birthplace can provide a road map to long-term economic prosperity.
Both Warde, himself a highly successful entrepreneur who in the past two decades used a mix of research, scientific exploration and engineering to create ground-breaking and sophisticated technological systems, and Holder, an expert research scientist in biological and inorganic chemistry, lament the absence of a research culture in their homeland.
That’s why they are urging the country’s established business enterprises and new entries into the marketplace to help finance research that can guide the development of commercially viable products and systems that attract investment and put people to work.
“Right now, we don’t have a research culture in Barbados and to build one it must be planned,” said Warde, acting executive director of the Caribbean Science Foundation based at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies.
“It would require some investment upfront. With the established trading culture you just buy the stuff, mark it up and you are done. A research culture just doesn’t happen necessarily by osmosis. When you look at the places that have done cutting edge research and changed the way that we live, a place that comes to mind is Silicon Valley in California. It has had a huge impact on human civilisation, the things we do. It has increased productivity, among other things.”
Holder, who, for instance, has conducted research involving the synthesis, characterisation and biomedical uses of cobalt, copper, vanadium and zinc complexes in alleviating diabetes, insists the opportunities for research that would help create natural products, medicines from plants, to fight diabetes and other diseases were being ignored, not because of the lack of scientific skill, but a paucity of money for research.
“Barbadian companies should help fund the research in diabetes,” Holder told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY. “We are missing out on the use of natural products and the business opportunities bio-medical research can create.”
He was quick to list lemon grass, soursop, leaves of sugar apple trees, and ginger as products that can be the subject of scientific research to provide medicines for diseases.
“We are missing out on these natural products,” added Holder. “That’s where business can come in. Scientists in Barbados and other parts of the Caribbean are leaving because of a lack of research opportunities. We can get a team of scientists extracting things from natural products, try to synthesise them and make a good drug industry in Barbados. We have a whole set of plants that people can utilise for natural products. Ginger is good for upset stomach. Tumeric can also be used to fight prostate cancer.”
The bottom line, as the biochemist sees it, is that Barbados is “missing out on agriculture” that once put Barbados on the global map.
“The key thing is to put some of the financial resources into [agricultural] research. “
Hence, the role of private sector enterprises should come in and provide funds for research at the Cave Hill campus and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital using natural products, whether it is diabetes, Zika virus or dengue.
Warde, who attended last week’s Barbados conference in Atlanta attended by two Cabinet ministers, academics, corporate executives, Government officials and hundreds of other Barbadians who live in North America, the United Kingdom, Spain and Barbados, all of whom discussed entrepreneurship, science and technology, health care and education as tools to boost the economy, said in an interview that Barbados needed new firms to lift the economic boat.
“There is a recipe which seems to work if you want to develop new technologies in ways that are globally competitive and that can change the landscape of the region in which these new technologies are hatched.”
“We don’t have that in Barbados. Most of the existing private sector companies are not really research type firms. We shouldn’t expect them to be that. We need a new kind of company. We also need to re-engineer the university if we want this to happen “Barbados needs it.”
Why?
“Tourism is no longer bringing in sufficient foreign exchange and isn’t expanding the gross domestic product sufficiently, so we are borrowing money left and right,” he noted. “Tourism is a very fragile economic pillar. You have a Zika virus, Chikungunya or a terrorist threat and tourists would stop coming.”
That’s why economic diversification is crucial, he says. Tourism has served Barbados well and can continue to do so. But with Cuba’s tourism booming in the wake of a thaw in previously hostile relations between the US and Cuba, the economic environment is becoming increasingly competitive for Barbados and its neighbours.
Hence, the need for another economic pillar and that’s where science and technology can come in.
