Brown asserts Jamaica not building modern economy

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Opposition Spokesman on Science, Technology and Digital Transformation, Christopher Brown, has charged that the country is going in the wrong direction in relation to the building blocks of a modern economy.

Using the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO) Global Innovation Index which ranks 139 countries on whether they are genuinely building the systems that drive modern economies, Brown noted that in 2020 Jamaica ranked 72nd, falling to 83rd in 2025.

“Five consecutive years of decline. Year after year, after year after year – decline. We’re going in the wrong direction,” said Brown during his contribution to the Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on June 3.

He also noted that in the category ‘knowledge and output’, Jamaica was ranked 117th out of 139 countries by WIPO and 94th for ‘network readiness’. “These are not opposition statistics. These are independent international scorecards. And the WIPO Secretary General was just here last week,” Brown remarked.

He also highlighted that in all of 2023, Jamaican inventors filed just  two patents to be ranked 121st globally. This, he said represents a 75 per cent decline from 2022.

“No tech unicorn. Not one Jamaican university in the international rankings. And this is not because we lack talent,” Brown lamented. He told the Parliament that, “Our culture is extraordinary — nobody disputes that, adding that “Jamaica is one of the great cultural powers of the world”.

“Our music, our language, our rhythms and our creativity shape global culture every single day. But in the age of artificial intelligence and digital transformation, we must now ask: who owns Jamaican culture in the digital century?”

The Opposition spokesman, who is also Member of Parliament for St Mary South Eastern, drew attention to the fact that AI systems are now being trained on Jamaican music, Jamaican accents, Jamaican slang and Jamaican creative expression — “often without compensation or protection for the Jamaican people”.

“Our culture is being mined as data while others monetise what Jamaica created; he said, warning that “innovation without sovereignty can become extraction”.

Brown said as Jamaica pursues digital transformation the country must also develop a serious national strategy around cultural intellectual property, AI governance and digital rights, and become a leading voice through bodies such as WIPO in protecting cultural sovereignty in the age of AI.

“So creativity without investment, as the WIPO Secretary General told the Prime Minister, Minister Wheatley and (Minister) Aubyn Hill just last week, creativity without research funding, without a system behind it — does not become patents”.

Meanwhile, Brown also highlighted that Jamaica ranks third in the entire world on the Human Flight and Brain Drain Index with more than 40 per cent of every Jamaican who earns a university degree  living and working abroad.

“The nurse from UWI is in Canada. The engineer from UTech is in London. The IT professional who could be building Jamaica’s digital systems is in Florida. They did not leave because they don’t love Jamaica. They left because Jamaica has not built the environment where their talent can be valued with dignity. No retention strategy. No tax incentive. No innovation district,” he said.