And today Dr Louis Zabaneh was part of a consultation with stakeholders from the public and private sector as well as those in academia. They are developing the first national science, technology and innovations strategy. This strategy will see Belize's progress into a more technological age, known as the fourth industrial revolution. Dr Zabaneh told us more at the consultation.
Dr Louis Zabaneh, Minister of State, MOECST
"The reality is, we are now in the fourth industrial revolution so we're talking about artificial intelligence, big data, all of these things that are really driving the world economy so we are of the view that as we look towards the next ten, twenty, fifty years. We wish to be active participants in this new world. We can have two paths to take, one which is we are consumers and dependent on what other countries are doing and so we could stick say to just adapting and innovating but it's coming from other places or we can make the decision today to invest in research and development, so invest in science which is upstream from innovation. We've done a lot recently with innovation but that's where the gap now is, if we decide and we've decided that we want to participate, we must now be able to invest in research and development and in science as well."
"We're benefitting from work that has always been done in innovation and the idea is to prepare a draft strategy and action plan that will be presented to Cabinet in the middle of June for their consideration and hopefully with the approval then we can start to implement the actions that have come from all the different stakeholders that are participating."
