There was nothing surprising for me in the Governor of the Central Bank’s review of the economic performance for the first quarter of 2013.
The negative economic cloud has been mounting over the head of Barbados for the last few years; the governor’s review was just a synthesizing of the writing on the wall, so to speak.
In my estimation, there have been no signs or changes in the economy or the way we do things that would suggest anything has taken place to give new hope that things were getting better. I also was not comforted by the governor’s suggestion that we are not so bad off compared with other countries (apples must be compared with apples). Cyprus has the Eurozone to run to; I am not so sure where we can find to run.
Without some tough decisions, I don’t see how we will get out. I think we are all tired of saying the situation calls for a radical rethink of our economic strategy as well as national development policies – blending the two allows us to deal with the issues of creating efficiencies and addressing resource deficits.
However, with all of this doom and gloom, I had a ray of sunshine recently I thought that I would share. I had the good fortune of participating in the Sagicor Visionaries competition which was aimed at encouraging innovation among schoolchildren to address critical challenges facing their communities. It was brilliant! There were many interesting ideas that with a little investment and critical thinking could be turned into really viable solutions.
It was good to see to how students observed the problems and issues in their communities and looked for ways to address them. There was one young man who said he passed by the school for the blind in his country all of the time, went home one day and saw an advertisement for a car in which the car was able to give directions to the driver when the car was reversing. That gave him the idea – if we can give eyes to a car, why can’t we give eyes to the blind?
There was another school which has come up with an interesting idea on how to encourage people to use kitchen gardens. They developed these kits which eliminate all of the issues realated to kitchen gardens. No space? They have a solution. Too hard to get started? They have a just-add-water kit. They produce, they package, they deliver and they market.
It renewed my faith in the fact that perhaps we can have in the future an entrepreneurial class not steeped in the business of just buying and selling, but that in the deep belly of our school system there is growing an emerging pool of innovative and creative thinkers linked to addressing social problems. I say in the deep belly of our school system because still in this century there is an undervaluing of innovation and creativity versus what we refer to as academics.
These students, though, had to combine all of these – the science, mathematics and technology as well as a response to a direct social challenge. If I had the money, this is what I would invest in. I would throw it at a group of bright, creative people who see solutions; who might not have all the answers but out of every 12 ideas created,I am sure I would get about five really top-notch ones.
I would take some of that stimulus away from certain sectors which have passed their time because they no longer fit as easily in the new environment and invest in the new and untried. I am not talking about agriculture but the other thing – tourism.
The traditional tourism product of sun, sea and sand is long gone and the sooner we realize that and stop investing so much in hotels and move to diversifying our product, the sooner will see the greater returns on our investment. This is where we will see the innovation and growth. I am sure this will not be a popular opinion – the tried and tested is safe.
The process also reinforced for me the idea that moving out of silos and creating solutions around diversity and a mix of skills is perhaps the approach we need to move this country forward. The traditional and conventional approaches to addressing some of the deep social and economic issues we have can no longer be the preserve of specialists and the elites. We need to create open spaces where solutions arise from a cross-fertilization of ideas and debate about issues.
Pushing the envelope! Hearing and respecting alternative opinions! Perhaps, in 2020!
• Shantal Munro Knight is a development specialist and executive coordinator at the Caribbean Policy Development Centre. Email [email protected]
