Science appears as an accessory, not the foundation it actually is
En cada campaña presidencial, una nación revela lo que verdaderamente valora. En Colombia, la ciencia, la tecnología y la innovación aparecen en los márgenes del debate electoral de 2026, tratadas como adornos del progreso en lugar de su arquitectura. Con apenas el 0,37% del PIB invertido en actividades científicas y un puesto 71 en innovación global, el país enfrenta una paradoja profunda: aspira a la sofisticación económica mientras deja sin cimientos la capacidad que la hace posible.
- Colombia invierte menos de la mitad de lo que invierten sus pares regionales en ciencia y tecnología, y el presupuesto del Ministerio de Ciencias cayó casi un 25% en un solo año.
- Más de tres billones de pesos del sistema de regalías permanecen sin ejecutar mientras proyectos científicos quedan en el limbo y la confianza entre investigadores e instituciones se erosiona.
- De los cinco candidatos principales, solo Sergio Fajardo presenta una arquitectura nacional para la ciencia e innovación; los demás la subordinan a la modernización del Estado, la justicia territorial o la retórica tecnológica.
- El 81% de los grupos de investigación se concentra en apenas unos departamentos, dejando regiones enteras —especialmente el Pacífico— sin capacidad científica propia.
- El próximo gobierno heredará la urgencia de estabilizar el financiamiento, descentralizar la investigación y convertir la biodiversidad y la transición energética en agendas de conocimiento real, no en promesas de campaña.
La campaña presidencial colombiana de 2026 transcurre sin que ningún candidato haya colocado la ciencia y la innovación en el centro del debate. Seguridad, salud, empleo y crecimiento económico dominan los discursos, mientras la capacidad científica —que haría posible todo lo demás— aparece como un tema secundario o decorativo.
Los datos son contundentes: Colombia invierte solo el 0,37% de su PIB en actividades científicas y ocupa el puesto 71 en innovación global. De casi 6.800 empresas manufactureras, apenas 11 son estrictamente innovadoras. La investigación se concentra en Bogotá, Antioquia y Quindío, mientras regiones enteras quedan rezagadas. El país tiene 90 investigadores por millón de habitantes y menos de 30 patentes por millón de residentes. El sistema existe, pero es pequeño, desigual y frágil.
El gobierno actual ha gestionado la ciencia con timidez: el presupuesto del Ministerio de Ciencias cayó cerca de un 25% respecto al año anterior, miles de millones permanecen sin ejecutar, y la confianza entre la comunidad científica y la institución que debería liderarla se ha deteriorado.
Entre los candidatos, Sergio Fajardo es el único que propone una reforma sistémica: nuevos institutos públicos de investigación, programas estratégicos nacionales, un instituto de inteligencia artificial, iniciativas de bioeconomía y una estrategia digital 2030. Su debilidad no es la visión sino la viabilidad, dado que Colombia rara vez ha sostenido la coordinación y los recursos que semejante agenda exige. Iván Cepeda introduce la ciencia como instrumento de reparación territorial —especialmente para el Pacífico y la Amazonía— pero sin arquitectura nacional clara. Paloma Valencia y Abelardo de la Espriella ven la tecnología como herramienta de modernización estatal y educativa, no como dominio político autónomo. Claudia López integra datos y tecnología en su propuesta de gestión pública, pero sin articular una estrategia de innovación independiente.
El patrón es revelador: ninguno de los cinco trata la ciencia como la capacidad organizadora que realmente es. Sin ella, no hay política de salud de alto desempeño, ni seguridad sofisticada, ni transición energética real, ni transformación productiva. El próximo gobierno, sea quien sea, heredará la necesidad de estabilizar el financiamiento, descentralizar la investigación y vincular empresas con conocimiento. Ese desafío no cabe en un ministerio débil ni en un gesto político decorativo.
Colombia's presidential race is unfolding without serious conversation about the scientific and technological capacity that would make everything else possible. Security, health, energy, employment, economic growth—these dominate the campaign discourse. Science and innovation appear, if at all, as afterthoughts, as though they were luxuries for better times rather than the foundation upon which everything else rests.
The numbers tell a stark story. Colombia invests just 0.37 percent of its GDP in scientific and technological activities, and only 0.20 percent in research and development. The country ranks 71st globally in innovation capacity, a significant slide from previous years. In manufacturing, 4,820 of 6,799 companies are non-innovative; only 11 qualify as strictly innovative. The research infrastructure is concentrated in a handful of places—Bogotá, Antioquia, and Quindío dominate the innovation rankings—while entire regions, particularly the Pacific coast, lag far behind. Colombia has 90 researchers per million inhabitants and fewer than 30 patents per million residents. The system is small, territorially unequal, and too fragile to drive real economic sophistication.
There is some human capital in place. The Ministry of Science reported 6,322 research groups and 25,514 recognized researchers in 2024. The country graduated 1,284 doctoral students in 2023. But 81 percent of research groups cluster in a handful of departments, and the doctoral production rate remains low for a country claiming to want knowledge-based development. The real bottleneck is not the absence of researchers but the lack of scale, coordination, continuity, and strategic use of what knowledge does exist.
The current government's stewardship of science and innovation has been minimal. The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation executed 86.94 percent of its budget through December 2024, but the current year's appropriation is nearly 25 percent lower than it was a year earlier. The ministry issued a national artificial intelligence policy document in 2025, but beyond that, progress has been thin. More troubling are reports of scientific projects languishing in limbo due to ministry decisions, and over three trillion pesos sitting unspent in the science sector while grant competitions stall and execution remains weak. Trust between the scientific community and the institution meant to lead it has deteriorated.
Now the five leading presidential candidates are being asked what they would do. Sergio Fajardo stands apart. His program devotes an entire chapter to science, technology, and innovation. He proposes a new governance model, a network of public research institutes, national strategic research programs, a national institute for artificial intelligence and data science, bioeconomy and biotechnology initiatives, clean energy innovation programs, a Colombia Digital 2030 strategy, and a national digital talent plan. He explicitly links universities, research centers, companies, and territories, and proposes moving doctoral researchers between academia, government, and the private sector. The weakness is not vision but viability—such an agenda demands resources, coordination capacity, and execution discipline that Colombia has rarely sustained.
Iván Cepeda takes a different path. His program lacks Fajardo's national architecture for science and innovation, but it insists that Colombia cannot continue with weak scientific development and that excluded regions, especially the Pacific and Amazon, deserve science and technology as part of historical reparation and productive transformation. He proposes a center for science and technological innovation in Buenaventura and emphasizes linking public universities, science, and youth training to regional development. Beyond these territorial anchors, science barely appears in his broader governance proposal. The intuition is valuable but remains dispersed across regional rhetoric without clear national instruments or stable financing.
Paloma Valencia and Abelardo de la Espriella both emphasize technological adoption and modernization. Valencia focuses on a digital state, artificial intelligence for permits and regulatory decisions, and education adapted to AI. De la Espriella speaks of the fourth industrial revolution, quantum computing, robotics, and digital economy, with strong emphasis on private investment in science and technology education. Both see technology as a tool for state efficiency and economic modernization rather than as a foundational policy domain requiring its own governance, research priorities, and institutional strength. Claudia López occupies middle ground, integrating technology and data into state redesign, results-based management, and territorial productivity—bioeconomy, energy transition, education—but without articulating science and innovation as an autonomous, coordinated national strategy.
The pattern is clear. Among the five candidates, only Fajardo formulates a systemic proposal. López and Valencia give visible space to technology and artificial intelligence but subordinate them to public management and productivity. De la Espriella embraces pro-technology rhetoric centered on education and modernization. Cepeda introduces science through territorial justice without yet building a national equivalent. None of them—not one—treats science and innovation as the organizing capacity it actually is. They treat it as an accessory tool.
This is the true problem. Without solid science and technology, there is no high-performance health policy, no sophisticated security, no bioeconomy, no energy transition, no productive transformation. A country that leaves science and innovation in second place condemns every other sector to operate with low complexity and limited learning capacity. The next government, whoever leads it, will inherit the need to stabilize financing, reduce dependence on intermittent funding, improve execution of royalty-system resources, expand the researcher base, decentralize scientific capacity across territories, strengthen the link between companies and research, and turn biodiversity, energy transition, and digitalization into knowledge agendas, not just rhetoric. None of that fits inside a weak ministry, a precarious budget, or a decorative political gesture. Colombia's real challenge is not forgetting science. It is imagining development in a way that puts science first.
Notable Quotes
Without solid science and technology, there is no high-performance health policy, no sophisticated security, no bioeconomy, no energy transition, no productive transformation— Analysis of campaign platforms
Colombia continues to treat science and innovation as secondary issues compared to economy, security, health, or energy, when it is precisely a transversal lever for advancing in all those fields— Campaign analysis
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does it matter how candidates talk about science? Isn't the real test what they actually do once in office?
True, but what they say reveals how they think about the problem. If a candidate sees science as a tool for making government more efficient, they'll build differently than someone who sees it as the foundation for everything else. The first person might create a digital platform. The second would rebuild the entire research ecosystem.
So Fajardo is the only one who gets it?
He's the only one who proposes a systemic answer. But systemic answers are hard to execute. Colombia has tried before and failed. The real question is whether any of them understand that you cannot have a modern economy, or modern security, or modern health without this capacity underneath.
What would that actually look like? A modern science system?
Stable, long-term funding. Research spread across the country, not just Bogotá. Universities and companies actually talking to each other. Doctoral researchers staying in the country. Clear national priorities—what do we want to know how to do? Right now it's scattered and fragile.
And the candidates aren't proposing that?
Most of them are proposing to use technology better. That's not the same thing. It's like asking someone to build a house when they're only thinking about paint colors.
What happens if the next president doesn't fix this?
Everything else gets harder. You cannot modernize agriculture without science. You cannot transition to clean energy without it. You cannot secure the country with intelligence if you have no research capacity. The country stays dependent, reactive, always playing catch-up.