Noel Thompson, Freelance Writer

WESTERN BUREAU:

WITH AN estimated 11 million people living in the Caribbean, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has embarked on a drive to provide opportunities for the majority in the region.

The IDB hopes to achieve this through various methods that will, in turn, raise the living conditions of Caribbean nationals in terms of housing, business development and micro-finance, through public, private and civil society partnerships.

Stuart Hart, a professor of management at Cornell University, believes there are multiple practical ways to begin the process, but said policymakers have to take a more inclusive view of how to create a business.

Working partnerships

"Rather than viewing those who have historically been left out of global capitalism and treating them as clients or as victims, we should treat them as partners to co-create new businesseses together," he said.

Professor Hart was speaking in an interview following his keynote address at the IDB-sponsored two-day conference entitled 'Oppor-tunities for the Majority in the Caribbean', held at the Half Moon Hotel in Montego Bay, last Thursday and Friday.

The conference sought to identify new development models to serve the majority in the region. It brought together corporate, non-profit, government and academic leaders to explore unconventional partnerships that could provide concrete solutions to problems faced by the region's low-income majority.

Speaking from a global perspective, Professor Hart said over one billion people were living in urban slums and said this could increase to two billion by 2015 if current living trends continue.

"This is probably the single biggest demographic trend that faces us globally - which is the mass migration from the countryside to the cities," he said. He added that in China, it was estimated that over 300 million people would migrate from rural communities into cities within the next 10 years.

noel.thompson@gleanerjm.com