Christopher Brown challenges Jamaica’s digital sector progress using global rankings

MP Christopher Brown has challenged the Government’s record on Jamaica’s digital and innovation agenda, arguing in Parliament that repeated announcements and assessments have not amounted to meaningful transformation.

Brown said Jamaicans, industry players and practitioners are entitled to judge the sector by what has been delivered, not only by the vision being promoted. He pointed to the minister’s own acknowledgement that the sector had been “sleeping”, saying that after 10 years the country still lacked the modern infrastructure, financing and legislation needed to support a serious digital economy.

He framed the issue as urgent, saying Jamaica could not afford delay while the global digital revolution continued to reshape economies. To support his criticism, Brown cited international benchmarks, including the World Bank’s Doing Business assessment. He said Jamaica had been ranked in the 60s globally among roughly 190 economies in the 2015-2016 period, but stood at 71st in the final report before the series was discontinued shortly before COVID-19.

Brown also referred to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index, which ranks 139 countries on innovation systems. He said Jamaica moved from 72nd in 2020 to 83rd in 2025, describing that as five straight years of decline.

On the same WIPO framework, he said Jamaica was placed 117th of 139 countries for knowledge and technology outputs, while network readiness stood at 94th of 127 countries. Brown stressed that those figures were independent international scorecards, not opposition statistics, and noted that WIPO’s director general had been in Jamaica the previous week.

He singled out patent activity as especially worrying, saying Jamaican inventors filed only two patents in all of 2023, leaving the country ranked 121st of 139 globally.