Juan Diego Barrera SandovalEcuador’s Yachay “City of Knowledge” was once the pride of former president Rafael Correa. His insistence on the project “breaking the country’s history in two” was paired with more than US$1 billion in public funding and US$150 million in private investment for the first four years of construction of a scientific research citadel and residential city occupying 4,462 hectares.
Countless promises of it becoming a “Latin American Silicon Valley” were made, including those Nearshore Americas reported over a decade ago. Nowadays, Yachay remains a source of frustration and is widely criticized in the country, though the tech education community within its academic campus persists.
Some believe Yachay shouldn’t have been built in the first place.
Seven years ago, columnist Santiago Bucaram wrote, “The concept of the project was based on the fallacy that in ten years we’d build, from scratch, a (city around a) university of excellence that would allow Ecuador to abandon dependency on commodities.”
The fallacy, Burcaram noted, was due to the government not considering the socioeconomic environment of the area it was looking to improve. Politically, the initiative appeared to be the next logical step after Ecuador’s 2011 investment in Proyecto Prometeo, a mission to import and repatriate tech talent.
Yachay’s launch followed in 2014 as Correa’s most daring bet on technological evolution as part of his government program, but it also infringed on existing academic institutions that were already hurting economically.
Nevertheless, the plan to help bolster Prometeo made sense: What better way of using incoming talent to multiply the country’s academic capital and advance digitalization and innovation?
University stands, but with a slouch
Today, the only active element of that research city dream is Yachay University for Experimental Technology and Research.
Casually called Yachay Tech, its university tends to be confused with Yachay EP by media and public opinion. The latter was the public company responsible for administrating the new city’s resources and was later questioned over low-budget execution.
Yachay Tech’ campus stands 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Quito, in San Miguel de Urcuquí, in the Imbabura province.
To be precise, it stands with a slouch, like many other Latin American public universities.
The current rector, Jorge Andrés Rosales, admits, “There are currently five buildings that are in gray construction, which were not finished, and are not being finished soon.”
Despite its challenges, computing professor Erick Cueva believes noticeable academic results need highlighting, “and they’d be stronger if the government really backed us.”
The university’s graduates have maintained a consistently high occupation rate over the years, surpassing 85%.
In this year’s Times Higher Education Ranking, Yachay holds the 97th spot and is Ecuador’s fifth best-performing university, though other major publications have not ranked it.
Vice-rector assistant Germán Velasco says the university has 2,000 students, with 500 entering each year and 100 graduating. All employees want more investment. But how will money flow back without completing construction, achieving stable leadership, and rebuilding confidence?
From paper dreams to redesigning schemes
Correa saw Yachay as the most significant legacy of his government’s strategy for productive transformation toward technology and science. It opened in March 2014, after more than five years of planning.
Although advertised as a “Silicon Valley,” Yachay was, in fact, modeled after South Korea’s Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ), a well-known tech park and free trade zone complex operating in Incheon. IFEZ brings more than US$1.6 billion to the Korean economy.
Analysts agree there was a failed attempt to fast forward the historical process necessary to emulate it. On one hand, it skipped the phase that made South Korea a tech leader with a tech investment culture. On the other hand, there was a bet placed on student growth before securing the completion of a robust computing or construction infrastructure.
Back in December 2015, Yachay Public Enterprise General Manager Héctor Rodríguez envisioned a city that by 2017 would foster 15,000 residents, a community college, a road connecting to the Pan-American highway, local commerce and health facilities, and a research-focused university that would lead Latin America’s digital evolution. More than 400 Yachay students resided on campus and paid no tuition.
Local news publications have been reporting the fallout ever since.
The transition to President Lenin Moreno’s administration shifted priorities from science and tech toward agro-industrial development. What once was Yachay EP entered liquidation in 2021 due to financial underperformance.
The university project has had several difficulties for the past 12 years.
From budget cuts and low execution numbers, and “arbitrary” professorial firing (and deportation), to country-wide security crisis and electric instability, and including quickly successive leadership crises, Yachay EP’s past administrations’ false claims of billion-dollar foreign investments brought a shift in education priorities. This all resulted in confidence slipping farther away, infrastructure projects being halted, and Yachay’s potential being significantly marred.
“We will have to wait at least 100 years until someone else risks investing in a similar project, once people have forgotten about all of this mess”, said Paola Ayala, former physics dean for Science Magazine.
Yachay’s pivot
When the public company in charge of building the infrastructure for Yachay Tech was dissolved, its responsibilities were transferred to Ecuador’s Superior Education, Science, Technology and Innovation Secretary (SENESCYT), which, according to current rector Jorge Andrés Rosales, was not (and still isn’t) prepared for the task.
“The decree with which this company was liquidated and passed to SENESCYT does not establish details of payments or many legal issues. So SENESCYT inherits problems such as the payment of taxes for the construction of the sewage system, and that’s beyond its functions as an entity,” Rosales said.
He believes many issues could be resolved if bureaucracy was untangled so the university could act directly, without the inefficient intermediary now handling Yachay EP’s original responsibilities. A funding injection estimated at US$49.5 million plus tax would be needed for building completion and reparation.
An inactive computer on an inactive campus
According to Rosales, an inactive supercomputer remains on campus, but it’s unused and lacks proper maintenance. That computer serves as the perfect metaphor for what happened with Yachay.
Those with the resources invested in it without understanding its need or following through with consistency and the needed leadership necessary to reconsider goals and approaches. Instead, it was left to the side of the political agenda. Will the rector’s intentions of “retaking the original path” with adjustments be enough?
The country’s political instability has seemingly robbed governments of the ability to plan for the future. As Ecuador’s presidential election approaches, the country’s biggest tech investment awaits a champion. Yachay Tech’s hierarchy demands candidates be clearer on their plans to push technical and professional education higher, especially in technology and science innovation.
Some questions remain: How can Latin American economies invest long-term in tech projects when crises shift priorities? How can nearshoring companies get involved in talent-producing efforts? And, if graduation rates define success, how come governments and candidates see employment and nearshoring investment potential?
Or, more obviously, how can a developing country bounce back from generation-defining bad tech policies?
Add comment