11 Smartest Countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean

What are the smartest countries in South America and the Caribbean? Previously we covered the dumbest countries in Asia and Europe. This time, we will talk about the smartest countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean as we analyze more of what makes a nation smart or dumb.

It is easy to identify a smart person but when it comes to finding smartest or dumbest countries, the task is a real hard one! There is no authentic study or research that can name a country smartest and to produce a list, such as this – the system is a very complex one. Even the word “smart” is hard to define as it used in so many ways. A person who is well educated can be smart for some; others might simply find someone with a peculiar sense of humor smart. Similarly, a person who is well-dressed and behaves nicely can also be called smart. The situation gets tougher when we move onto the smartest countries as there are even more scales that can measure the smartness of a country. One can easily look for countries with highest literacy rate but the World Bank defines literacy as an ability of an individual (15+) who can read, write and understand a simple statement. The question here is would you be calling such an individual “smart”? Of course not! Or a country that produces the most number of engineers but is not able to retain them?

To create a list of 11 smartest countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean we have adapted a different strategy. We have taken 4 categories according to which one may assess the smartness of a country and have averaged out their score to create our unique list of 11. The categories that we have selected are “quality of math and science education” “the use of internet” “advancement in technology sector” and “higher education enrollment rate”. Our rankings are mainly based on the report of WEF published as “Global Competitiveness 2014-2015 Report”.  For a detailed discussion of this methodology please read our article about the dumbest countries in the world.

Let’s quickly get down to number and discover which country stands at number 11.

11. Brazil

At number 11 we have Brazil, one of the members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) the pool of top 4 emerging economies of the world. Brazil has shown some great promise in recent times and the figures mentioned below continue to improve.

Quality of math and science education: 2.6

Rank based on quality of math and science education: 14

Tertiary education enrollment %: 25.6

Rank based on tertiary education enrollment: 62

Patent applications/million: 3.2

Rank based on patent applications: 98

Percent of individuals using internet: 51.6

Rank based on internet access: 86

Average ranking score: 65