Dear Editor,

Jamaica’s decades-long struggle with low productivity remains one of the greatest obstacles to national development. Although we have achieved commendable macroeconomic stability and fiscal discipline, productivity growth has remained stubbornly weak.

Too often, public agencies digitise outdated processes in isolation, universities produce valuable research that seldom reaches implementation, and local technology companies innovate without sustained pathways into national development. The result is fragmented progress rather than systemic transformation.

An instructive example emerged on June 27, 2026 when China established its National Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) Technology Innovation and Industry Development Alliance. Rather than leaving research institutes, universities, manufacturers, and technology firms to work independently, the alliance brings them together within a coordinated national framework to accelerate innovation and industrial development. The lesson is not that Jamaica should imitate China’s technological ambitions, but that we should emulate the principle of strategic collaboration.

Jamaica would benefit from establishing a Jamaica National Infrastructure and Technology Alliance (JNITA) — a permanent partnership bringing together the Government, the parliamentary Opposition, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), universities, teachers’ colleges, non-governmental organisations, public utilities, and the country’s growing technology sector.

The Government’s role should be to provide the legislative and policy framework, modernise procurement systems, and facilitate secure data-sharing across public agencies. The Opposition should support this as a bipartisan national productivity initiative rather than a partisan project.

The private sector and local technology companies should contribute engineering expertise, software development, investment, and commercialisation, focusing their innovations on solving real national challenges rather than isolated commercial opportunities.

Our universities, teachers’ colleges, and research institutions should provide the data science, artificial intelligence, geospatial analysis, and workforce development needed to ensure solutions are evidence-based and adapted to Jamaica’s unique social and economic realities. Such collaboration would also strengthen research commercialisation and help retain many of our brightest graduates.

A coordinated alliance could develop secure innovation sandboxes in which researchers, engineers, and public agencies collaborate using real operational data from organisations such as the Jamaica Urban Transit Company and the National Water Commission to tackle chronic problems, including traffic congestion, non-revenue water, inefficient public services, and administrative delays.

Countries that successfully integrate research, government, and industry are increasingly defining the technologies and markets of the future. Jamaica cannot afford to continue pursuing development through disconnected initiatives. We need a coordinated national ecosystem that allows innovation to move from the laboratory to implementation with speed and purpose.

Our greatest national resource is not simply our creativity, but our ability to work together. A Jamaica National Infrastructure and Technology Alliance could become the catalyst that finally lifts our productivity and strengthens our long-term competitiveness.

Dudley C McLean II

dm15094@gmail.com