IDB head urges stakeholders to ‘put knowledge to work’

Shane Su­perville

The lat­est de­vel­op­ments in re­search and in­no­va­tion across sev­er­al crit­i­cal sec­tors are be­ing show­cased as the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) launched its in­au­gur­al Knowl­edge Week 2026 at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in Port of Spain this week.

A me­dia re­lease is­sued by the IDB on Wednes­day stat­ed that the four-day con­fer­ence fea­tures a range of plat­forms and re­sources aimed at bridg­ing gaps be­tween par­tic­i­pants and ex­perts in fields in­clud­ing health, en­er­gy and agri­cul­ture through an in­ter­ac­tive learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, IDB Group coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Trinidad and To­ba­go Ju­lian Bel­grave urged stake­hold­ers to take a broad­er view of re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment and fo­cus on prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions sup­port­ed by ef­fec­tive part­ner­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tion.

"When your in­sti­tu­tion is con­fronting a com­plex de­vel­op­ment chal­lenge, come to us not on­ly for fi­nanc­ing, but for ev­i­dence, tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, glob­al ex­pe­ri­ence and re­gion­al proof points.

"The pur­pose of Knowl­edge Week is not sim­ply to show­case what we know, it is to put knowl­edge to work.

"Let us take that ac­tion to­geth­er with shared pur­pose to sup­port a more in­clu­sive, re­silient and sus­tain­able fu­ture for the peo­ple of T&T and the wider Caribbean."

The re­lease stat­ed that Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh al­so at­tend­ed the launch and praised the ini­tia­tive, say­ing such part­ner­ships strength­en pol­i­cy­mak­ing and help ad­dress emerg­ing chal­lenges through a col­lec­tive ap­proach.

Dr Swarats­ingh de­scribed fo­rums such as Knowl­edge Week as valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­change ideas and pro­mote in­no­va­tion.

"By com­ing to­geth­er to ex­change ideas, share ex­per­tise and de­vel­op prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions via fo­rums such as Knowl­edge Week, these stake­hold­ers can dri­ve in­no­va­tion and cre­ate ini­tia­tives that are both sus­tain­able and scal­able."

One of the high­lights of this year's event was the launch of the IDB Group's BidE­co­nom­ics pub­li­ca­tion, which out­lines op­por­tu­ni­ties for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and the or­gan­i­sa­tion's medi­um-term strat­e­gy.