University must develop more leaders

Former Prime Minister Professor Owen Arthur has thrown out a challenge to the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus to develop more intellectual leaders to help Barbados emerge from its economic and social struggles.

Insisting that the university should continue to see itself as a catalyst for Caribbean development and civilization by developing the human capital, Arthur said more importantly, the tertiary institution “has to provide intellectual leadership”.

“I say intellectual leadership because there is a need for intellectual leadership at this time when the region is facing a variety of challenges that go arguably beyond anything the region has faced in its modern history,” said Arthur.

The trained economist was addressing a ceremony at the Cave Hill Campus on Wednesday evening to launch the book Empowering Management, which is written by Prefessor Jamal Khan and Dr Wayne Charles-Soverall.

Describing the book as a very important publication that came “ideally at the right time”, Arthur said it was a must read, while suggesting that it provided some of the answers to the region’s management issues at the macro and micro levels.

“So what are some of the challenges that have to be addressed that this book can help us to deal with? First of all, Barbados and the Caribbean have to build a new modern economic system, driven less by the traditional factors of production – land, labour and capital. In today’s world a new economic system must be built and driven by technology, entrepreneurship and innovation,” said Arthur.

“The reason we need intellectual leadership, and this book will help to provide intellectual leadership, is because the region has come to the end of our development paradigm. The reason there are so many profound problems in Barbados and the rest of the region, is that it is as if we are trapped between two worlds, one is virtually dead and the next is struggling to be born,” he suggested.

Arthur explained that there was once a time the region depended heavily on trade preferences and debt, and to a lesser extent, grant aid. However, he said, it was now clear those were no longer an option.

“So a development model that worked in the past is no longer working and many economies are still holding onto that development model and are not sure what they are going to go to as an alternative. This is where Barbados and the region need the intellectual exercise that can only come from a place of higher learning, to be able to see how we can get out of this particular morass,” he said.

Arthur also pointed to the region’s existential threats including that of global warming and natural disasters, adding that states in the region also faced the challenge of deciding how to “balance between our social sector sand economic sectors”.

The former Barbados Prime Minister who served between 1994 to 2008, said there was a time when there was “harmony” between the development of social systems and our economic systems, but it is also now true that because of the economic difficulties the country has experienced the social system without adjustment, has become” too large” for the economy in crisis to carry.

He said the country’s growth and overall development were based on the fact that it had thriving manufacturing, tourism, offshore and agriculture sectors.

However, pointing out that those sectors came under various pressures both domestically and internationally, Arthur said the economic climate had changed but the social systems were maintained, leaving the country with a social system that is now “too large for the economy to carry”.

“There is no national consensus as to how we can re-engineer the social system and hence a tremendous challenge for the state,” he added.

He also stated one of the biggest problems facing the region now was “institutional marginalization”.

“We are societies that depend largely upon cross-border transactions, whether it is exports or manufacturing or investments for development. The crux of the problem is that institutions that set the rules in respect of cross-border transactions are institutions where generally we are not members,” he explained, as he singled out issues relating to correspondent banking as one example of rules set without the Caribbean being at the table.

He insisted that the state must find new ways in which to relate to citizens and get consensus on the development model for the region in which social benefits and economic transformation can work “harmoniously”.

He said key to addressing the issues were good governance, adding that Caribbean states should start operating like entrepreneurs.

“We need, in the Caribbean, a state that behaves like an entrepreneur. That it takes reasonable risks, it responds to constant change, not with a view to generating profits per se, but the return that the entrepreneurial state is seeking is the advance of the standard of living . . . Unless the state is entrepreneurial we are going to get overwhelmed,” he cautioned, while acknowledging that the task ahead for transformation was a “massive one”.

Turning his attention to the UWI again, Arthur said while some things had changed there, he was dissatisfied that some archaic systems remained.

“If you are going to be giving the world advice about moving systems and paradigms from administration to empowerment and so on, then charity has to begin at home,” he said to applause.

“We have to stop seeing the University of the West Indies only as an institution of higher learning, and see it as an enterprise and that the approach to it, for example how it is managed and how it is financed, should be changed,” he said.
marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb