Science and technology in Panama

Between 2015 and 2019, SENACYT conducted a foresight exercise entitled Panama 2040, in consultation with public and private socio-economic actors. The study established a roadmap for transforming Panama into an ICT hub and a fully sustainable and inclusive society by 2040.[1]

To this end, the Strategic Plan 2019–2024 (2020) proposes doubling GERD to 0.33% of GDP by 2024, augmenting patenting and following a smart specialisation approach to defining territorial agendas for innovation. The emphasis will be on dialogue and social innovation. In July 2019, Panama became the first Central American country to ban single-use plastic.[1]

Since the establishment of SENACYT in the late 1990s, there have been successive five-year national strategic plans. A review of the fourth plan covering the period to 2019 pinpointed a high degree of structure and coherence among programmes. These plans have been considered ambitious and even visionary, as they have sought to harness research to problem-solving and have led to prospective studies on frontier technologies. One foresight exercise also examined potential outcomes of policy implementation.[1]

In 2015, SENACYT launched an extensive programme to provide rural and urban communities with greater Internet access. Over the past five years, Info plazas AIP has established over 275 such access points at different locations identified by local authorities, such as schools and other public buildings. In 2019, the programme was transformed into a legal entity with functional autonomy, the Agency of Public Interest.[1]

The presence of three prestigious research institutions specializing in biodiversity, biotechnology and biomedicine (Institute for Scientific Research and High Technology Services, INDICASAT), tropical medicine (Gorgas Memorial Laboratory) and tropical research (Smithsonian Institution) ensure a good citation rate, even if output at the national level is low.[1]

In the period since 2015, the number of researchers has increased to 800 (in head counts), a large proportion of whom hold doctoral degrees (42%).[1]

This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Text taken from Latin America, In: UNESCO Science Report: the Race Against Time for Smarter Development., Gabriela Dutrénit, Carlos Aguirre-Bastos, Martín Puchet and Mónica Salazar, UNESCO. To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see this how-to page. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use.