Will Jamaica ever learn?

Julian 'Jingles' Reynolds, Guest Columnist

The recent news items in the Jamaica media, and elsewhere, on the researches being undertaken by more than one team of Jamaican scientists into the 'cancer-fighting' or 'anti-cancer properties' of more than one Jamaica herb, bring to mind several past experiences of mine in this area. It also again brings to the fore my frustration with Jamaican governments' approach to socio-economic planning for Jamaica.

Oftentimes I am questioned, and even chastised, about not "writing more". It is this failure or inability, if you will, to convince the powers that be, the decision makers in Jamaica, over four-plus decades of writing and speaking that a more participatory role by the government in the economic life of Jamaica is the only way of bringing the country out of a Third-World developing mode. And if they are not doing such, they are contributing to the underdevelopment of the society, the social inequality and ever-increasing crime rate.

In the late 1960s, I developed a friendship with the late Dr Sam Street, chief medical officer of Jamaica, after writing a feature article on him for THE STAR newspaper. I had undertaken a mission which was supported by my editors at The Gleaner Company to write features on prominent Jamaicans, and Jamaicans with emerging talent and voices, in a newly independent nation. Along with Dr Street, I wrote about Shirley Maynair Burke, St William Grant, Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Mallica 'Kapo' Reynolds, Kenneth Mattis, Neville Willoughby and Judy Mowatt, to name a few.

My relationship with Dr Street brought to my attention the research being carried out then at the University of the West Indies into the 'anti-growth properties' and medicinal values of the cerassee, periwinkle and marijuana herbal plants. Along with Dr Street, the other scientists I recalled were Drs Manley West and Alfred Lockhart. Patience, prudence and efficacy were some of the highly valued principles that instructed these researches and my involvement. Although I was fully informed of the processes being undertaken, I was required not to write of what was ongoing until the findings were completed and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

First lead

I complied and, after waiting some two years, it led to my first page-one lead story in The Daily Gleaner, I believe in 1970, and published almost simultaneously with the researchers' findings published in the prestigious medical journal. This I followed with several other articles in The Gleaner and Star, one of which was another significant development of the use of properties from the periwinkle (also known as ram goat dash-along and ram goat roses) plant in the treatment of leukaemia. My lead article on the anti-growth properties of Jamaican herbs led to quotes from my article appearing in The New York Times and other leading newspapers and wire services around the world, being interviewed by my senior editors at The Gleaner, and having my work quoted in the editorial section of The Gleaner. I was about 22 years old and "bubbling". I developed an interest in Jamaican herbs and followed the developments over the years.

Many years later, living and working in the Unites States, I was a member of the National Minority Business Council team (the NMBC is a business organisation in the US that tends to the interests of the minority and women-owned business community) that took a trade and investment mission to Jamaica in the late 1980s. Because of my awareness of how Canasol had evolved as a drug for the treatment of glaucoma, from those earlier researches into the medicinal properties contained in Jamaican herbs, my NMBC partners used our relationship with Pfizer, the giant American pharmaceutical company, to have Pfizer send one of its managers to the mission in Jamaica.

Didn't happen

The intention was to have Pfizer invest in the manufacturing of Canasol for worldwide distribution through their global marketing chain. I was not close to the business and technical discussions that ensued, but was informed by my partners that the Canasol management team in Jamaica seemed more intrigued as to our connections with Pfizer than with providing the data needed to consummate the deal. It didn't happen. I summed it up as a lack of trust on the part of black Jamaicans for their own kind operating at a high level with an American company in an international market. Pfizer was at the time one of the primary corporate sponsors of the NMBC and played a major role in the programme that connected small, minority-owned businesses to Fortune 500 companies.

In the United States, one of the small companies of which I was a part owner was active in the health-food industry, and we supplied dried herbs imported from Jamaica to other small and medium-size companies in the herbal and nutraceutical business. After some careful thought, we made a decision to move the manufacturing component of the business closer to the source of raw material, and as we were getting most of our supplies from Portland, we decided to establish operations in Port Antonio. This was 2004. The then member of parliament for West Portland, Errol Ennis, a friend of mine, and one of my partners from high-school days at Kingston College, got word of our plans to locate in Port Antonio in factory space owned by the Factories Corporation of Jamaica, and invited us to look at land and a potential space in his constituency only 30 minutes from Port Antonio.

We decided to take up his offer and included the growing of Jamaican herbs on the land to use in the nutraceutical processing operation and grow other agricultural crops, developed a business plan and were able to finally take control of the property after more than a year of negotiations, and with the understanding that necessary financing would be secured by us from the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) with support and guarantees from the government. Well, the only thing we got from the DBJ was praise of our vision and the business plan, a lot of runaround, and I recall Dr Henry Lowe mentioned by one of the bank's representatives as having a keen interest in meeting with us. We spoke on the phone, I believe, but never met.

I noted with interest that in one of the articles that recently appeared, Dr Lowe, certainly a pioneering Jamaican entrepreneur and scientist, lamented the lack of access to investment capital in their nutraceutical venture that holds so much potential for growth and development. As I have articulated for so many years, a whole new mindset to finance capital being made available for entrepreneurial projects must be prioritised by the Jamaican government and implemented by the financial sector.

I will not here reiterate my proposed 'Develop Jamaica Initiative', but, suffice it to say, to move Jamaica away from its people sinking deeper into poverty and exposing more of the gross inequities in the society, a development czar must be introduced to the economic landscape to marshal the mobilisation of the Jamaican workforce and take charge of making the number-one priority for the country; increased production and productivity; someone with the zeal, the commitment, the passion, the high energy, the creativity and command for respect that Robert Lightbourne brought to industrial development, Carlton Alexander and Mable Tenn brought to GraceKennedy, Gloria Knight brought to the Urban Development Corporation, Ray Hadeed brought to manufacturing, Tony Hylton to the shipping industry, Herbert McDonald and Herb McKenley to athletics, Theodore Sealy to journalism, Mike Fennell to sports, and Danny Williams to the insurance industry and philanthropy.

There is absolutely no other way out for Jamaica. And if this is not done, the political and financial leadership will have convinced many of us that its objective is to maintain the status quo, and lead the country into social upheaval and decay, rivalling countries like Haiti and too many African countries. Could this be the design for Jamaica?

The nutraceutical market in the US alone exceeds US$26 billion per annum, and with the proven medicinal values of so many Jamaican herbs long established, it should have long been a strategy of the Jamaican leadership to position itself to take even one per cent of that market over a five-year period, which translates to added revenue to Jamaica of US$260 million per annum, not to mention Europe's market estimated to be larger than the US. It's doable but it takes vision and proactiveness to inspire the Jamaican workforce to pursue this objective. And it must be a national thrust.

As I have stated unabashedly, I am a statist, especially as it relates to the governance and development of small nation states. Not for the government having total control of the economic life of the state as it was in Cuba and the Soviet Union, but that it plays a central role in setting parameters, policy, making finance capital available for an equitable and sustainable development, and bringing order and much-needed economies of scale for small nation-state industries to compete in global markets, oftentimes competing with nations multiple times larger in population.

A typical fundamental involvement of the government playing a participatory role in the economic life of a nation is to ensure that companies in an industry come together to impact global markets and not rely on so-called free market that provides mainly for the interest of the bigger players in that industry, who may not be able to make a significant inroad into a huge market but rather just earn enough to satisfy its bottom line, excluding other smaller players from penetrating that market which would benefit a larger pool of the citizenry.

The Asian experience has done this effectively, looking to the pattern of growth and development of Japan, China, and Singapore. Jamaica's leadership needs to emulate this and stop repeating the same mistakes and missteps. The Jamaican leadership must instill the importance and rewards of nationhood over individualism, cliques and the decadent culture of benefiting the few at the expense of the nation.

Julian 'Jingles' Reynolds is a writer, filmmaker and entrepreneur operating in the United States and Jamaica. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.