Timor-Leste must invest in science and technology, Xanana Gusmão says

DÍLI, 14 August 2026 (TATOLI) — Timor-Leste must strengthen its scientific and technical capabilities to keep pace with rapid advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, medicine and other technologies, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão said Monday.

Speaking at the Science for Development Summit 2026 at the Dili Convention Centre, Gusmão said countries that understand and adapt to technological change will have new opportunities, while those that fail to do so risk falling further behind.

“Timor-Leste cannot afford to be left behind,” he said.

Gusmão said science and technology have transformed societies by improving healthcare, agriculture, communications, education and economic opportunities.

For Timor-Leste, he said, scientific development is particularly important because the country faces a shortage of people with specialised skills and expertise.

“As a small country, it will take time to educate and train all the doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, tradespeople and other specialists that our development requires,” he said.

He stressed that there was no substitute for investing in human resources, while noting that new technologies could help the country make better use of existing skills and expand access to knowledge.

Gusmão highlighted artificial intelligence as one technology that could have a significant impact on Timor-Leste.

AI could help health workers access medical information that would otherwise require specialist support, strengthen the use of Timor-Leste’s mother tongue languages and help farmers combine practical experience with scientific information on crops, weather and diseases, he said.

It could also help young entrepreneurs who have good ideas but lack the resources to hire accountants, programmers, translators, researchers or marketing advisers.

“Increasingly, AI may provide some of these capabilities at very little cost,” Gusmão said.

But he warned that the benefits of AI must be balanced against its risks.

“The same technology that makes information and knowledge more accessible can also make fraud and deception more sophisticated,” he said.

AI-generated voices, images and videos could be used to create convincing scams, fraud and political misinformation, making it increasingly difficult for people to distinguish between fact and fabrication.

“The danger is not only that people will believe what is false. If anything can be fabricated, people may also begin to doubt what is true,” he said.

Gusmão said this posed a challenge to democracy and public trust, particularly as governments and institutions increasingly rely on digital technologies.

He also raised concerns about technological sovereignty, warning that a small number of powerful companies could gain significant control over technologies on which governments, businesses and communities depend.

“AI can spread knowledge widely while concentrating control of the technology in very few hands,” he said.

Gusmão said countries such as Timor-Leste needed to understand the implications of that concentration of technological power, as technological change would continue regardless of whether smaller countries were prepared for it.

He pointed to the rapid adoption of mobile phones, Facebook and WhatsApp by Timorese people as an example of how quickly new technologies can become part of everyday life.

Artificial intelligence, he said, would similarly become increasingly integrated into daily life, but it was only one part of a broader scientific and technological transformation.

“The larger challenge is whether Timor-Leste has the knowledge and skills to understand these changes and use them for our own development,” he said.

Gusmão called for stronger scientific and technical education and greater capacity within Timor-Leste’s universities.

He also said the government needed to understand the technologies it adopts so it could maximise their benefits while protecting citizens and national interests from emerging risks.

As Timor-Leste embraces scientific progress, he said, technological development should remain focused on improving human life.

“Technology is a tool to improve human life, not to diminish the things that make us human,” Gusmão said, adding that society must still “leave space for the poetry of life.”

TATOLI