Waitu – Tech : How we Leap Frog Dominica to Sustainable Prosperity

By Dominica Patriot News Service Special Correspondent

In 2018 the US owned and chartered Ross University Medical School left Dominica for Barbados under the watch of the Skerrit regime. Ross’ departure left a gaping hole in the foreign exchange architecture of our national economy. While it is right and proper to condemn the inept handling of the Ross University matter by the regime, it would be shortsighted and intellectually dishonest to not consider the many missed opportunities to create in that area of Dominica an advance center for learning, science and technology innovation not solely dependent on Ross.

In 2000 the Diaspora led initiative to partner Dominica with the University of New Orleans (UNO) led to the first MOU between a Dominica government and a major US university. The plan was for UNO to site an offshore campus at Portsmouth, adjacent to Ross and in partnership with our the Dominica State College focused on eco-tourism studies and related hospitality training. Dominica then could become a pace setter in eco-tourism and so distinguish itself in that evolving niche market. Prime Minister Rosie Douglas died seven months afterwards and the MOU with UNO withered away into nothingness. The Portsmouth centered leadership   of the Skerrit regime thereafter focused on passport sales to power Dominica’s prosperity. After 15 or so years of that focus what do we have to show for it? A half empty 5 star hotel in a dead  economy, without the buttressing of proper air access and support services.

Any government coming into office will have a rough time as Dominica’s economy is dead. There is very little economic activity driving foreign exchange income other than passports. Therefore, we must be visionary and industrious in securing a better future.  The better future resides in development of a green-energy powered Waitu-Tech Dominica  Technology Park. Waitu-Tech will focus on:

1. Renewable energy science 
2. Botanic science innovation in collaboration with the Dominican Botanical Gardens
3. Light industry assembly of information technology and electronic products 
4. Water science innovation and related product development
5. Marine science studies and related product development
6. University partnerships and distance learning 
7. Dominica Futures Society and Integrity in Leadership Institute
8. Development of creative industries focused on music, art, cuisine and culture

Dominica has been blessed to have had Dr Sherman Severin, a physicist involved in the development of the Intel chip. He presented at the December 7, 2001 Dominica Diaspora in the Development Symposium at the Brooklyn Marriott. He asked the government and private sector to work on building ethically grounded relationship capital. He focused on the reality that Dominica had a high level of competent sons and daughters but we did poorly in way if building integrity ethically grounded and productive  relationships. Relationship capital, Dr. Severin taught us is what allowed Israel to become an advanced nation because the Jewish Diaspora gathered their financial and intellectual resources for nation building. The same can be said of the Irish, Indian, Chinese and Korean Diaspora. The Dominica Academy of Arts & Sciences was a trend setter in that regard where it engaged numerous projects such as reviving the Dominica Cadet Corps and restocking the medical stores at the Princess Margaret Hospital following its destruction by fire in 2005. The Academy’s members also developed RebuildDominica.org as an instrument of disasters recovery in all spheres. Instead of trying to partner honestly with the Dominica Academy the regime tried to destroy it.  Roosevelt Skerrit and Vince Henderson, both ministers then, attended the Symposium but obviously were oblivious to the wise  message of Dr. Severin.   Had they listened they would have continued along the path of corralling our intellectual resources at home and abroad to build the technology park concept seized upon by Prime Minister Rosie Douglas in his first month in office. Instead of focusing on such science and technology driven enterprise, in partnership with the Diaspora, they  chose to become passport peddlers. They chose instead to see the Diaspora as a place to secure votes by bribery and treating when they give the tickets and money to overseas residents to come down and vote. 

Why have they never developed a platform for honest engagement with the Dominican Diaspora in arts and sciences? Such a collaborative has never been forged because it requires gravitas. It requires wise and sober deliberation. You cannot engage serious partnership in arts and sciences by putting on a red hat, wearing a red shirt, blowing a red horn and jumping up and down to garish music, playing the fool.

 Great endeavors in the arts and sciences require honest, reflective labour in an atmosphere of reasoned judgment and within a rule of law framework. History teaches that no nation within whose borders corruption is rampant can prosper or long endure. Look at the failed states around the world. For the most part they are ruled by lawless and corrupt leaders and guarded by morally repugnant elites.   Instead of embracing the wise recommendations of the Diaspora Policy Paper prepared by the Dominica Academy of Arts & Sciences, the regime leaders surrounded themselves with thieves and hoodlums. Now Al Jazeera News report them for what they have become hungry hyenas. People who took power to plunder not build. Their ally Monfared said their real mathematics was 90 percent of the proceeds for themselves and 10 percent to put into development of the country.  The parlous state of our economy and bankruptcy of our state institutions, the poverty of our private sector (except the morally repugnant elites) are the best evidence of their catastrophic failure in leadership.

Let us advance to building the Waitu Tech Dominica Technology Park within the first 100 days of a new government. In so doing we can partner with our Diaspora  – not simply to come down and steal an election – but to help propel our nation to the highest rungs of achievement in the arts and sciences linked industry.