A PROJECT OF THE FOUNDATION NETWORKS AND DEVELOPMENT (FUNREDES)
The Caribbean Region is commonly defined as an area of 24 island countries plus 4 mainland countries maintaining close ties with the Caribbean islands (Guyana, Belize, Surinam and French Guyane) N1. The 28 countries represent a total population of 35 millions, covering a total area of 727 000 km2.
The population shares a common geographic and climatic area and a complex cultural background where commonalities and specificities are equally important. The relative cultural homogeneity emerged as a product of various factors:
There are however large differences between the Caribbean
countries:
N1: A larger definition encompasses countries like Venezuela and
Colombia which hold tight economic and cultural relationships. A
more larger definition incorporates the set of countries around
the Caribbean Basin, thus including Centro America and Mexico.
N2: Solely in mainland countries survived some original indian
populations
N5: The other part belongs to the French department of Guadeloupe
(Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyane), and five on the United Kingdom
(Caiman Islands, Turk and Caicos, UK Virgin Islands, Montserrat,
Anguilla).
-In term of level of economic development: from Haiti's US$ 320
GNP per head to the Bahamas US$ 12 000.
The Caribbean countries are also divided by several factors:
The current world evolution which shows the emergence of two opposite trends (the grouping of regions within economical common structure and, in parallel, the demand of recognition from cultural minorities) is of particular acuity in that region where the touristic flows increase at the same speed as the volume of emigration. The progress of the NAFTA arises concerns within the region and should also act as an indirect integration incentive.
For all countries of the area, the prospect for development lies on a better cultural, economic and political integration.
Annex 1 and 2 show, for each country, the political status, the basic indicators and the level of participation in existing integration schemes (Lom� IV, CARICOM, OECS, CBI).
A first level diagnostic shows that languages differences are not the mere explanation for difficulties in integration, since divisions exist inside common linguistic areas. The main barrier to overcome the politic and economic resistances and the first obstacle to the Caribbean integration process rather lies in the lack of organized regional communication.
The numerous intents to seed the integration process at the cultural level present the characteristics to come short in term of momentum and consequent follow-up. The important efforts made at the economic level (Lom� Convention, OECS, and, above all, Caricom) have not yet reach the point of triggering a global integration process (the Caribbean Basin Initiative should not be taken as an integration program but rather as an export and investment development scheme.
Beside the Caribbean culture and its natural tendency to make people take their time in every aspect of their social life, apart some understandable fear about regional competition, the weakness of the global outcome of the various actions is better explained by the very poor level of regional communication. Each country is mostly oriented, in term of communication, toward one of the related foreign countries. In term of Science and Technology, little is done to share with the neighbor country (except maybe within the English speaking area, particularly trough the University of West Indies, which have campuses in various places). The existing integration efforts have to struggle against the difficulties for day to day intra-Caribbean communication which represent a painful and critical overhead.
At the difference of other regions, the essence of the Caribbean makes the concept of frontier rather inapplicable, thus preventing the natural mechanism which, from commerce and personal direct dealing make two countries sharing a frontier start develop some kind of articulation and feeling of belonging to the same commercial zone.
It is significant to observe that the sea and air means of transportation usually show a star topology which makes the travel distance between two countries equal to the diameter of the circle (except touristic operations where the only integration which occurs is that of the perspective of visiting persons, realizing after several stops that, as different as they may appear, these people share, not always consciously, a lot of commonality).
The diagnostic is clear and neat: what is lacking is a transport infrastructure! Useless to state the right direction to solve the problem is not necessarily to start by sea or air transportation (forget about terrestrial...), but rather by information highways. The existence of an organized information infrastructure would effect considerably the future of this region and may even drive the launching of more conventional transportation systems...
The new information and communication technologies represents a unique opportunity to tight the relationships between Caribbean people, arise consciousness on their common background, level up the motivation for common actions, boost the productivity of current actions, and eventually drive political changes in the common interest of the countries sharing this tropical area.
An effective strategy to reach the whole community is to target growing and concentric circles from the intellectual communities (scientists and cultural oriented), to socially important communities (health, education...), the business, the politic, and the rest of the population (somehow like the Internet is emerging).
The building of an information infrastructure, by its nature,
must go much beyond the scope of the transmission and the
transport layer of networks and focus primarily the couple
"users/services". The two main priorities, beside the
realization of effective and efficient information transport
mechanisms, are:
The project consists in creating, in each country, a national information network for the research and academic community (extensible to other sectors), with the following main focus:
The subregional integration factor will be present in each
element:
The linguistic factor is clearly a key element of the project. The project has to consider three languages as mandatory: Spanish, English and French. However, in order to go beyond the overhead represented by this point, the project must commit to deeply incorporate the recent developments in automatic language translation (which, by the way, could find in the electronic highways a field of experiment particularly appropriate).
The project is divided in five parts (two of which have already been done, and one being under process):
A- The elaboration of a specific methodology for building national academic and research networks. This step has already been completed (see references 3). The methodology needs only to be adjusted depending of the most recent technological changes and local conditions.
B- The realization of the Dominican Republic national network, with a strong integration factor with Haiti. This step is already done: the user group has been organized, users has received training, and basic e-mail is functioning since 1.5 years. Some further steps are required such as the installation of full Internet capacity and the organizing of the application layer. See references 4.2 and 4. 3 for more details.
C- The realization of the Haitian national research network, with a strong integration factor with Dominican Republic. The plan was to do it together with the Dominican network. The political turmoils in Haiti made it very difficult. Few months ago, the project restarted with more strength, the progress are now consistent (a group has be formed with experimental Internet access, an electronic conference started, and soon some 50 users will be installed). A decisive move should be undertaken with the forecasted return of democracy. The project is all set-up but budgets are required to organize the technical solutions. The first level of evaluation of the amount of budget required to cover the full process is in the order of 200,000 US$. The estimated duration for completion evaluated at 6 months. See references 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7 for more details.
D- The CARITIN project feasibility study. Create the ground for the project:
The first level evaluation for the feasibility study budget
turns around 200,000 US$:
| -Travel and per |
diems: 40,000 |
| -Expertise: |
100,000 |
| -Consultants: |
60,000 |
The proposed team for the feasibility study is (see Resumes in attached document:
Daniel Pimienta, general manager, methodological and technical matters (F,S,E N4) Senaida Jansen, cultural and associative matters, (S,F,E) Pablo Liendo, user and services matters (S,E)
Jean Marie Burgaud, economic matters (F,S,E) Michel Perdreau, information and documentation matters (E, F, S) Rafael Colon, networking matters (S, E) Pedro Ure�a, linguistic and cultural matters (S, F, E)
The duration for completion is estimated at 9 months.
PARTNERS:
Some Organizations have already announce their interest in
participating in the CARITIN project (UNESCO/CRESALC, FAO,
ENDA-CARIBE, CIECA, CERLAC) and could participate in their
respective fields of competence.
E-A User group step.
In each participating country, help federate the various
institutions of the Science and Technology domain into a
non-profit association scheme. Help create the conditions for
participation of the institutions and the end-users in a national
priority task.
Duration= 18 months
F-An application step.
in each participating country, create the conditions for the
installation of national data bases accessible from the Internet
and start a set of pilot application oriented projects.
Duration= 18 months
The differences in the step of development of the various countries argue for a moderate level of overlap between the tasks:
Year x Year x Year x
1 2 3
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N4: E=English, S=Spanish, E=French
4-BACKGROUNDS/ANTECEDENTS
The development of research networks in the Caribbean has not been driven by a pattern of commonality. The main lines are:
In term of cooperation or integration from networking the only
relevant actions are:
The size of the projects and the diversity of the countries involved call for a non unique source funding mechanism: the EEC (Lom� Convention), Canada and the USA should be invited to participate.
6-ANNEX 1: Caribbean countries political status, basic indicators
Source: Jean Marie Burgaud
________________________________________________________________________
COUNTRIES POLITICAL AREA POPUL. GNP/ HIGHER
STATUS KM2 1990 CAPITA EDUCATION
(2) 1990 ENROLMENT
US$
(3) (5)
________________________________________________________________________
ANGUILLA UK 91 7000 na na
ANTIGUA & BERMUDA IND (UK,1981) 440 65000 4600 na
ARUBA NETHERLANDS 250 61000 na na
BAHAMAS IND (UK,1973) 13940 247000 4900 4900
BARBADOS IND (UK,1966) 430 255000 6540 5227
BELIZE IND (UK,1981) 22960 189000 1970 na
CAIMAN ISLANDS UK 259 27000 na na
CUBA IND (SPAIN, 1898) 110860 10608000 2972 (4) na
DOMINICA IND (UK, 1978) 750 72000 1940 60
DOMINICAN Rep. IND (SPAIN, 1844) 48444 7170000 820 123745
GRENADA IND (UK,1981) 340 91000 2120 535
GUADELOUPE FRANCE 1779 390000 na na
GUYANA IND (UK, 1966) 214970 796000 370 2328
FRENCH GUYANA FRANCE 91000 98000 na na
HAITI IND (FRANCE, 1804) 28000 6486000 370 6829
JAMAICA IND (UK, 1962) 10990 2420000 1510 12504
MARTINIQUE FRANCE 1101 360000 na na
MONTSERRAT UK 100 11000 na na
NETHERL. ANTILLES NETHERLANDS (1) 740 175000 na na
PORTO RICO USA 9104 3530000 na na
St KITTS & NEVIS IND (UK, 1983) 270 42000 3340 167
ST LUCIA IND (UK, 1979) 620 133000 1900 367
ST VINCENT IND (UK, 1979) 340 107000 1610 736
SURINAME IND (NETH., 1975) 163265 422000 3050 3402
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO IND (UK, 1962) 5130 1236000 3470 4939
TURKS & CAICOS UK 430 12000 na na
UK VIRGIN ISLANDS UK 150 16000 na na
US VIRGIN ISLANDS USA 344 107000 na na
_________________________________________________________________________
7-ANNEX 2: Caribbean countries participation in integration schemes
Source: Jean Marie Burgaud
__________________________________________________________________
ANGUILLA *
ANTIGUA & BERMUDA * * * *
ARUBA *
BAHAMAS * * *
BARBADOS * * *
BELIZE * * *
CAIMAN ISLANDS *
CUBA
DOMINICA * * * *
DOMINICAN Rep. * observer *
GRENADA * * * *
GUADELOUPE *
GUYANA * * *
FRENCH GUYANA *
HAITI * observer *
JAMAICA * * *
MARTINIQUE *
MONTSERRAT * * *
NETHERL. ANTILLES * *
PORTO RICO associated
St KITTS & NEVIS * * * *
ST LUCIA * * * *
ST VINCENT * * * *
SURINAME *
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO * * *
TURKS & CAICOS *
UK VIRGIN ISLANDS *
US VIRGIN ISLANDS associated
_________________________________________________________________________
2-INTEGRATION TROUGH NETWORKING
4-REGIONAL NETWORKING ACTIVITIES