Riding the tech wave
Published:Friday | January 29, 2021 | 12:26 AM
Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ tech dream is for Jamaica to become the Silicon Valley of the Caribbean, and sees the pandemic-induced movement towards life and business online as an opportunity for small businesses to innovate.
Jobs have been eviscerated by the disruption, but the PM said by riding the tech wave, innovators would end up creating replacement jobs; that businesses just needed to be bold about embracing the opportunities.
“The combination of automation and the COVID-19-induced recession is creating a double-disruption scenario for workers. The pace of technology adoption is expected to remain unabated, and likely to accelerate in some areas,” Holness said, as he addressed the official opening of the Jamaica Stock Exchange 16th Regional Investments and Capital Markets Conference streamed from Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston.
“The technological change is happening rapidly around us, and what Jamaica cannot afford to happen is for another wave of industrial change to happen and we’re not on the crest of it,” Holness said, adding that the zone of opportunity lies in areas such as artificial intelligence, biometrics, genome editing, renewable energy, 3D manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, business intelligence, big data and the internet of things.
Jamaica is on a digital transformation drive, with one of the lynch pins being a National Identification System, NIDS, that is currently being legislated – for the second time, the first bill having been derailed by concerns upheld by the constitutional court about privacy issues.
Referencing his hope for Jamaica to become a tech-centric society akin to Silicon Valley in California, Holness said NIDS would be one of the tools to drive change and that persons are already being trained in coding and STEM subjects – sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics.