Trelawny, Jamaica (May 25–27, 2026) — At the Innovation With and For a Purpose (IP) Summit 2026, Dr. Collins Airhihenbuwa, Distinguished Professor at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health, delivered a powerful challenge to the technical focus of earlier sessions. He asked participants to confront deeper questions: Why are we innovating, for whom, and are we truly breaking free from colonial legacies or reproducing them in digital form?
Speaking in what he described as a “polylog,” Dr. Airhihenbuwa drew on African, Caribbean, and diasporic intellectual traditions — invoking thinkers such as Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, Stuart Hall, Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney, and Fela Kuti — to argue that innovation must be rooted in cultural honesty, identity, and self-knowledge. His three guiding questions — Where are we heading? What questions are we answering? Who are you without your credentials and title? — challenged both individuals and institutions to ground ambition in purpose.
He closed with a call to collective courage, drawing on Jamaican and Caribbean cultural life, including the Jamaican bobsled team’s 2025 North American championship, as proof that dreaming beyond current capacity is not naïve but necessary. Using the parable of a snake riding a horse, he urged participants to recognize that claiming cultural space may appear upside down to others, but from within, it is exactly right.
Dr. Airhihenbuwa’s keynote underscored that the Global South’s innovation agenda must be more than technical capability — it must reclaim identity, resist dependency, and ensure that purpose guides progress.
Event Details
Event: Innovation With and For a Purpose (IP) Summit 2026
Dates: May 25–27, 2026
Location: Trelawny, Jamaica (Ocean Coral Spring Resort)
