Jordan ranks 81 on Global Innovation Index

ISTANBUL — Jordan ranked 81 globally and ninth regionally on the 2021 edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII).

Released amid the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the 14th edition of the GII captures the worldwide innovation landscape and annual performance of 132 economies, with the aim to overcome the pandemic and “build back better”.

Tracking the most recent global innovation trends, the primary goal of the GII is to provide performance measures and help guide policymakers to design policy responses that drive economic progress.

“The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered the ways in which the world lives, works and learns. Innovation is changing in the post-pandemic era,” the 2021 GII reported. 

The GII showed that investment in innovation has shown significant resilience during the pandemic.

Economist Mazen Marji told The Jordan Times that, “Jordan is still progressing and developing in many sub-activities in the domain of innovation, however, it has deteriorated somewhat in many other innovation outputs.”

Jordan’s ranking of 81 globally and ninth regionally on the GII “does not reflect the actual possibilities, the real choices and the level of ambition”, Marji said, adding that, “in fact, it broadly mirrors a creativity and innovation stalemate”.

The world has witnessed a “quantitative and qualitative evolution”, which is built upon free thought, innovation and an outward-oriented business environment, Marji added.

The Kingdom’s innovation ecosystem needs to be improved and the appropriate technologies must be used, in order to address the pandemic’s adverse effects, Celina Varouqa, a Jordanian computer scientist and technology expert, told The Jordan Times on Wednesday.

Varouqa added that “innovation should be at the centre of Jordan’s strategies and policies, in order to survive and most importantly thrive during all crises”.