Raphael John-Lall

A Ja­maican en­gi­neer and in­no­va­tor liv­ing in Brazil be­lieves T&T could un­lock eco­nom­ic val­ue by ef­fec­tive­ly util­is­ing the skills of the large mi­grant pop­u­la­tion that has moved to T&T over the last decade.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Kim­roy Bai­ley said he and his wife, Sheri­ka Trott Bai­ley, de­vel­oped what they call the “Trott Bai­ley Fric­tion Econ­o­my The­o­ry” — an ap­proach cen­tred on val­ue lost when peo­ple, ca­pa­bil­i­ties, re­sources and needs fail to con­nect.

In Ja­maica, he was the re­cip­i­ent of the Prime Min­is­ter Youth Award For Ex­cel­lence in 2013 due to his out­stand­ing work and suc­cess in ro­bot­ics en­gi­neer­ing and re­new­able en­er­gy re­search. He was al­so the re­cip­i­ent of the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al Award in 2015.

The roots of their Trott Bai­ley Fric­tion Econ­o­my The­o­ry go back to 2020–2022, when his fam­i­ly was liv­ing in South Ko­rea.

Af­ter South Ko­rea, he said their ex­pe­ri­ence re­build­ing fam­i­ly life in Brazil pushed the idea much fur­ther as they be­gan look­ing not on­ly at un­count­ed work, but at “fric­tion”: use­ful peo­ple, knowl­edge, equip­ment, land, in­sti­tu­tions and needs ex­ist­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly but fail­ing to con­nect.

By 2026 he had for­malised those ob­ser­va­tions un­der the name Trott Bai­ley Fric­tion Econ­o­my The­o­ry, with Pra­do, Bahia in Brazil be­com­ing an im­por­tant phys­i­cal test­ing ground giv­en the num­ber of mi­grants there.

Bai­ley’s re­gion­al en­gi­neer­ing work in­cludes his in­volve­ment with the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC), where he was one of the Caribbean con­sul­tants in­volved in de­vel­op­ing the CAPE Green En­gi­neer­ing syl­labus.

He worked with the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil from 2014 to 2018 as part of the re­gion­al con­sul­ta­tion work sur­round­ing CAPE Green En­gi­neer­ing.

His ex­pe­ri­ence in en­gi­neer­ing and tech­nol­o­gy lat­er ex­tend­ed in­to Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI), with him de­vel­op­ing Pa­corips, an AI-based sys­tem de­signed to map peo­ple’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties along­side needs, re­sources, equip­ment, knowl­edge and op­por­tu­ni­ties. The tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides the prac­ti­cal foun­da­tion for the Fric­tion Econ­o­my con­cept, al­low­ing com­mu­ni­ties to iden­ti­fy con­nec­tions that might oth­er­wise re­main in­vis­i­ble.

Al­though he has not vis­it­ed T&T as yet, but plans to in the fu­ture, Bai­ley’s re­la­tion­ship with T&T goes back to his days at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Ja­maica, where he lived at Far­quhar­son Hall with a Trinida­di­an room­mate, Bruce Charles.

“It was fun­ny, but it left an im­pres­sion on me about Trin­bag­o­ni­ans: when they are pas­sion­ate about some­thing, they can be deeply com­mit­ted to it. My re­la­tion­ship with T&T lat­er be­came pro­fes­sion­al. As an en­gi­neer, I was one of the Caribbean con­sul­tants in­volved in de­vel­op­ing the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil’s CAPE Green En­gi­neer­ing syl­labus.”

Find­ing ex­ist­ing val­ue

Bai­ley ex­plains his eco­nom­ic the­o­ry through a builder and welder. A builder may need a spe­cialised tool. A welder can fab­ri­cate, while the welder needs the builder to con­struct a bet­ter work­space. If nei­ther has mon­ey, both needs re­main un­met de­spite the ca­pa­bil­i­ties al­ready ex­ist­ing.

“The Fric­tion Econ­o­my asks a dif­fer­ent ques­tion: why not con­nect the builder’s ca­pa­bil­i­ty di­rect­ly with the welder’s need and the welder’s ca­pa­bil­i­ty with the builder’s need? Val­ue can be cre­at­ed even when no mon­ey changes hands. That val­ue may be poor­ly cap­tured by Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP), but it does not cease to ex­ist.”

Bai­ley ar­gues the same prin­ci­ple ap­plies to com­mu­ni­ties. A Trin­bag­on­ian may have use­ful skills but no con­ven­tion­al va­can­cy, while a small busi­ness own­er may lose pro­duc­tive hours to ad­min­is­tra­tive du­pli­ca­tion. Fam­i­lies al­so spend time co­or­di­nat­ing trans­porta­tion, child­care, ed­u­ca­tion and work.

Mi­grant eco­nom­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion

Bai­ley has ob­served the in­flux of Venezue­lan mi­grants in­to T&T over the last few years and ar­gues that they have a con­tri­bu­tion to make to the T&T econ­o­my.

He be­lieves T&T has le­git­i­mate rea­sons for reg­is­ter­ing mi­grants, in­clud­ing iden­ti­ty and se­cu­ri­ty screen­ing. But reg­is­tra­tion could be fol­lowed by un­der­stand­ing the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of peo­ple liv­ing here.

He cau­tions against us­ing skills map­ping sim­ply to match mi­grants and lo­cals to ex­ist­ing jobs.

“There is a dan­ger if skills map­ping be­comes sim­ply a more ef­fi­cient way to place mi­grants in­to ex­ist­ing jobs. If one Trinida­di­an and one Venezue­lan are qual­i­fied for a sin­gle po­si­tion, map­ping both peo­ple’s abil­i­ties does not cre­ate an­oth­er po­si­tion. Some­one still los­es. That keeps the coun­try trapped in­side the same ‘Tri­ni ver­sus mi­grant’ ar­gu­ment.’”

In­stead, he builds the case that pol­i­cy­mak­ers should ask what a per­son can do, what needs ex­ist near­by, what re­sources are un­der­used and whether new ac­tiv­i­ty can emerge by con­nect­ing them.

“The pur­pose of map­ping should there­fore be au­thor­ship, not mere­ly em­ploy­ment al­lo­ca­tion. Ask not on­ly: Which job can this per­son fill? Ask: What can this per­son do, what need ex­ists near­by, what tools or re­sources are un­der­used, and what new val­ue could be cre­at­ed by con­nect­ing them?”

The­o­ry to par­tic­i­pa­tion

Pa­corips gives Bai­ley’s ar­gu­ment a prac­ti­cal di­men­sion. Rather than record­ing some­one sim­ply as a farmer, welder or teacher, the sys­tem is de­signed to cap­ture wider ca­pa­bil­i­ties, needs and sur­round­ing re­sources.

Bai­ley said it can al­so in­cor­po­rate pro­gres­sive ca­pa­bil­i­ty val­i­da­tion, peer ver­i­fi­ca­tion and trust sig­nals, rather than re­ly­ing sole­ly on cre­den­tials.

He be­lieves this could sup­port a small vol­un­tary T&T pi­lot project in­volv­ing lo­cals and mi­grants, test­ing whether AI can iden­ti­fy pro­duc­tive re­la­tion­ships that con­ven­tion­al job data­bas­es over­look.

“Un­til re­cent­ly, map­ping those re­la­tion­ships across an en­tire pop­u­la­tion would have been ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly dif­fi­cult. Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence changes that. AI can help match needs, skills, equip­ment, ma­te­ri­als, lo­ca­tions and in­ter­ests across thou­sands of peo­ple with­out re­duc­ing every­body to one of­fi­cial oc­cu­pa­tion.”

“The ma­chine should not de­cide what peo­ple are per­mit­ted to do. It should help peo­ple dis­cov­er one an­oth­er. T&T has an ad­van­tage here. Its size is small enough to test such a sys­tem at hu­man scale, while its econ­o­my is large and so­phis­ti­cat­ed enough for a suc­cess­ful mod­el to have Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance.”

Cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties

Bai­ley sees ap­pli­ca­tions in agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing us­ing this AI ap­pli­ca­tion.

A farmer need­ing ir­ri­ga­tion equip­ment could po­ten­tial­ly be con­nect­ed with an­oth­er farm pos­sess­ing idle equip­ment and a tech­ni­cian ca­pa­ble of re­pair­ing it. A man­u­fac­tur­er need­ing a spe­cialised re­place­ment part could po­ten­tial­ly find a lo­cal ma­chin­ist.

“In­stead of wait­ing un­til enough mon­ey ex­ists to im­port a re­place­ment part, the sys­tem might iden­ti­fy a near­by ma­chin­ist ca­pa­ble of fab­ri­cat­ing it. That re­pair does more than restart one ma­chine. It strength­ens lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty for the next break­down. That is what Sheri­ka and I mean by cre­at­ing new pies in­stead of end­less­ly di­vid­ing the ex­ist­ing one.”

Bai­ley and his wife say they ex­pe­ri­enced the ap­proach in Brazil. At Vi­la Reen­con­tro Sapopem­ba in São Paulo, they of­fered free Eng­lish class­es to Venezue­lans, Bo­li­vians, An­golans, Brazil­ians and oth­ers. Lat­er, in Pra­do, Bahia, they plant­ed aban­doned land, ex­per­i­ment­ed with crops in dif­fi­cult sandy soil and shared what they learned.

“We did not take some­body’s Eng­lish-teach­ing job. We cre­at­ed some­thing that was not there. We en­cour­aged peo­ple from French-speak­ing African coun­tries to recog­nise that they too car­ried knowl­edge they could share. At the same time, Vi­la Reen­con­tro re­duced one of our great­est fric­tions: shel­ter.”

Bai­ley ac­knowl­edges that cap­i­tal re­mains es­sen­tial for ma­chin­ery, land, work­shops, cred­it and ex­pen­sive equip­ment. But he ar­gues mon­ey should not al­ways be the first mech­a­nism con­nect­ing a need with a so­lu­tion.

For T&T, he be­lieves a small vol­un­tary pi­lot project could map skills and ca­pa­bil­i­ties among both lo­cals and mi­grants, iden­ti­fy un­met needs and un­der­used re­sources, and use AI to find po­ten­tial con­nec­tions.

The re­sults could be mea­sured through new ser­vices, re­pairs, pro­duc­tion, train­ing and busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty.

Bai­ley wants the dis­cus­sion to move be­yond whether mi­grants are tak­ing jobs from lo­cals.

“T&T na­tion­als should not be asked to sur­ren­der scarce op­por­tu­ni­ties so mi­grants can be ac­com­mo­dat­ed. Mi­grants should not be treat­ed mere­ly as ad­di­tion­al com­peti­tors for a fixed num­ber of jobs. Both as­sump­tions be­gin with scarci­ty. The Fric­tion Econ­o­my be­gins some­where else.”

The mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion process can es­tab­lish who is in the coun­try.

Bai­ley be­lieves the more im­por­tant eco­nom­ic ques­tion is what those mi­grants, to­geth­er with T&T cit­i­zens, can cre­ate.

“The more pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic ques­tion is: What can the peo­ple al­ready here au­thor that does not yet ex­ist? A coun­try can­not build last­ing pros­per­i­ty by end­less­ly de­cid­ing who re­ceives the re­main­ing slice of a fixed pie. Even­tu­al­ly, it has to learn how to cre­ate more pies.”