Jamaica’s new Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Chief of Operations Lorenzo Escondeur is advocating a technology revolution as a means of addressing challenges under COVID-19 conditions in the island.

Escondeur noted that COVID-19 has put the world, especially the Caribbean, to the test and that the pandemic has become the great natural accelerator of an imperative digital transformation.

“Jamaica has a great opportunity to advance in this transformation, for example by investing and focusing on the expansion of broadband as the necessary foundation for the development of the public and private sectors,” Escondeur said. “From this will arise new business models, new ways of managing natural resources, and new models of education for our children, among many other innovations”.

He reckons that focusing on digitisation and connectivity will also allow countries to accelerate the use of the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Augmented Reality, Blockchain, and others), that are already generating profound transformations in the lives of people, organisations, societies and markets.

These new technologies will allow government and businesses to generate new interactions, new types of data, new behaviours, new opportunities, and new services and products.

A national of Uruguay, Escondeur has been a member of the Inter-American Development Bank team for the past 21 years.

Escondeur previously served as an Operations Advisor to the Vice President for Sectors and Knowledge, providing strategic and expert technical advice in highly complex business topics.

The IDB release said he led the development and improvement of several processes, policies, and systems, based on modern and innovative approaches to improve project execution and better serve clients.

Therese Turner-Jones, IDB Jamaica’s Country Representative and General Manager of the Caribbean Country Group outlined that Escondeur also gained a wealth of experience while working in key operations roles at the Institutional Capacity and Finance Department, Development Effectiveness Department, the Regional Department for Andean and Caribbean Countries as well as the Country Office in Uruguay.

Escondeur holds a Master’s degree in Management Information Systems Technology from The George Washington University and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Universidad de la Empresa of Uruguay.

“I will be an advocate to support, accompany and motivate the public and private sector as well as the Jamaican people to bring to the table their creativity and their collective intelligence to get the most out of this great digital revolution and the opportunities presented by the pandemic. My goal is to contribute to generate a new mindset that fosters collaboration, co-creation, diversity and puts people at the center of any attempt to come with better and different solutions for development challenges,” Escondeur said.