Jamaica filed only two Patents in all of 2023

While the Government missed its own research and development target, Opposition Spokesperson Chris Brown reveals

Jamaica has recorded five consecutive years of decline on the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Global Innovation Index, falling from 72nd place in 2020 to 83rd out of 139 countries in 2025, according to Opposition Spokesperson on Science, Technology, and Digital Transformation Christopher Brown.

Delivering his maiden sectoral contribution in Parliament, MP Brown cited a series of independent international scorecards and the Government’s own strategic documents to argue that Jamaica is consistently confusing announcement with accomplishment and celebrating speeches as action whilst the modern digital infrastructure, legislation, and funding required to compete in the global digital economy remain conspicuously absent.

“These are not opposition statistics. These are independent international scorecards. And the WIPO Secretary General was here just last week. Jamaica ranked 83rd on the Global Innovation Index. Knowledge and Technology Outputs ranked 117th out of 139. Network Readiness 94th out of 127. We are going in the wrong direction.” said the Opposition Spokesman.

Brown drew particular attention to a commitment contained in the Government’s own Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology Strategic Business Plan 2022 to 2026, published in February 2022. Strategic Objective Eight of that document committed the Government to facilitating an increase in Research and Development investment to one percent of GDP by March 2026. That deadline has now come and gone.

He noted that the same document recorded the baseline at 0.001 percent of GDP, less than one hundredth of one percent, and that the World Intellectual Property Organisation records no Research and Development expenditure figure for Jamaica at all, describing the country’s investment as too negligible to register internationally.

“One percent of GDP by March 2026 was the Government’s own commitment. That is this month. WIPO records no Research and Development figure for Jamaica. Not a small number. No number. Too negligible to register internationally. Where is the one percent?” asked the Opposition Spokesperson on Science, Technology, and Digital Transformation.

Brown revealed that in the whole of 2023 Jamaican inventors filed just two patents, placing the country 121st globally and representing a decline of 75 percent from the previous year. He contrasted this with the Government’s stated ambitions for innovation, technology, and economic modernisation, and argued that creativity without research funding and without a supporting institutional system does not translate into patents, companies, or sustained economic activity.

Compounding the innovation challenge, he noted that Jamaica ranks third in the entire world on the Human Flight and Brain Drain Index, with more than 40 percent of every Jamaican who earns a university degree now living and working abroad. He argued that this is not because Jamaicans lack talent or love for their country but because the environment to value that talent with dignity, through retention incentives for STEM professionals, innovation districts, and pathways for returning diaspora, has not been built.

Drawing on his own direct experience in the private sector working alongside eGov Jamaica, the National Identification System, and the Jamaica Digital Exchange Programme, Mr Brown described a consistent and recurring pattern across successive administrations in which grand announcements are followed by stretched timelines, rising costs, confusion, rebranding, and eventually a new speech that begins the cycle again.

He cited the Data Protection Act, passed in 2020 but not enforced until December 2023, as an example of good law executed scrappily, and noted that the ICT Authority Act, passed six years before being operationalised in April 2025, reflects the same pattern. He acknowledged genuine achievements, including the work of JaCIRT, the Data Protection Act, and the JDXP platform, but insisted that credit and criticism must exist side by side if Jamaica is to close the gap.

Brown called for a new Research and Development investment target to replace the missed March 2026 commitment, with binding annual reporting to Parliament and a requirement that Jamaica’s figure appear on the WIPO register rather than as a blank space. He also called for a university commercialisation framework enabling research at the University of the West Indies and the University of Technology to generate patents, licences, and companies that create jobs on the island rather than careers abroad.