The Caribbean urgently needs better communications infrastructure. Could public-private partnerships be the answer?

Caribbean countries are deepening their investment in critical communications infrastructure, in order to secure future economic growth and create pathways to social innovation.  

Regional leaders reiterated the importance of information and communications technology (ICT) to regional growth at the Caricom Heads of Government conference held at Dickenson Bay, Antigua and Barbuda from July 1st to 4th. They noted its importance as an enabler for other sectors and as a critical sector in its own right to spur innovation and entrepreneurship.

The governments of Grenada, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines are now partnering with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) to harmonise the development of national communications infrastructure across the Eastern Caribbean. As an agency of CARICOM, the CTU was approached by the World Bank in 2012 to support a holistic approach to regional public infrastructure development, through a program called CARCIP—the Caribbean Regional Communications Infrastructure Program—funded through the World Bank’s International Development Association. CARCIP was allocated a total disbursement of US$25 million, including loans to the three countries and a grant to the CTU.

CTU hosts PPP talks

Under CARCIP, the countries will establish and upgrade submarine cable infrastructure, terrestrial broadband backbone fibre networks and cross-border links, as well as Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). More significantly, a pilot initiative launched under CARCIP could change how regional governments work with the private sector to keep their national broadband network infrastructure upgraded, secure and open to competitors. On July 8, the CARCIP project coordination unit of the CTU will host a workshop on public-private partnership, commonly called PPP. Government officials attending the workshop will seek to develop a better understanding of PPPs among stakeholders in the CARCIP countries, and a plan for the development of a legal, regulatory and institutional framework that will support the implementation of PPP projects.

The workshop will be facilitated by Denzel Hankinson, a public-private partnership (PPP) and telecommunications specialist, and owner of DH Infrastructure, with almost two decades of experience in public infrastructure development projects and PPP training for projects in Mongolia, Nepal, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ghana and the United States.

The use of PPPs in the region has, in general, been limited and mostly ad-hoc, but renewed interest has emerged due to increased fiscal pressures. An official communqué from the CARICOM heads of government conference in Antigua describes the promotion of more private sector investment and public-private partnerships as “a critical driver of economic growth in a mutually beneficial partnership towards the promotion of the community’s growth agenda”. At the conference, a meeting of heads of government and regional business leaders touched on the need to create “capital-friendly economies through an improved harmonised regulatory framework and public private partnerships”.

CARCIP is, in this context, a pilot initiative providing proof-of-concept for the wider regional PPP implementation efforts. The second report of the Caricom Commission on the Economy, which focussed on the reform of the region's business operating environment, specifically identified the need to promote public private partnerships for the development of the economic infrastructure with technical advice from the World Bank and other international organisations. But there is little activity in the wider Caribbean, no doubt in part becuase the understanding of what PPPs are, when to use them, and how to structure transactions remains limited, although Jamaica and T&T have introduced PPP policies, established PPP units, and are developing detailed guidelines for procuring projects as PPPs.

As a precursor to the PPP Workshop, the CTU will host a meeting of CARCIP project coordinators and permanent secretaries of the respective ministries with responsibility for ICT, on July 7th. Representatives from the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL) and the Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN), who are partnering with the CTU on the regional project, will also attend.

Both CTU meetings will take place at the its new headquarters in St Clair, Port-of-Spain.

“We are happy to host the CARCIP meeting and public-private partnership workshop, and look forward to a productive session,” said Junior Mc Intyre, CARCIP CTU project coordinator.

Bright path to digital careers at TechLink Barbados

More than thirty young Barbadians learned basic skills for developing successful mobile apps and producing high-quality digital photography at a special workshop facilitated by the BrightPath Foundation, in collaboration with Columbus Communications.

A mix of small business owners and entrepreneurs assembled at the Cave Hill School of Business for BrightPath's TechLink, a regional technology education program offering training in digital content creation and business development.

Bevil Wooding, executive director of BrightPath Foundation, described TechLink as "practical training in technology related skills to communities across the region.”

“Making the shift from digital consumers to digital producers is important for creating the jobs and businesses of the future. How successfully we build the digital Caribbean of tomorrow depends on how well we build our technical capacity today,” Wooding said.

Facilitators Stephen Lee, Mark Headley and Juma Bannister led the sessions of the one-day workshop.

"What makes TechLink unique is that it really gets participants to see the impact they can have as content creators in whatever medium they choose," Lee said.

Lee, CEO of ArkiTechs Inc, an IT services company, is a Jamaica-born BrightPath volunteer. He led participants through the fundamentals of mobile app development.

His eager young students were visibly and audibly enthused by the opportunity to get hands-on training.

In a nearby room, a group of photography enthusiasts were schooled by another expert volunteer facilitator.  Juma Bannister, a Trinidad-based professional photographer and head of Relate Studios, covered the basics of digital photography and followed up by overseeing an afternoon of practical exercises around the scenic campus venue.

"Photography has always been a wonderful way to tell stories in pictures. Now, with the internet, we can also easily share those picture stories of our region with the world,” Bannister said.

“Initiatives like BrightPath’s TechLink benefit individuals and communities by enabling us to solve our own problems and create our own opportunities. It creates independence, inspiring us to take risks, and encourages global involvement,” said Shelly Ann Hee Chung, Columbus Communications vice president of sales and marketing for the Eastern Caribbean.

Commenting on the collaboration with BrightPath Lee said, “Columbus and BrightPath Foundation are equally committed to developing technology capacity in the Caribbean. Columbus’ support for BrightPath’s pioneering TechLink initiative brings this dream to life.”

The TechLink initiative, launched in Grenada last November, is being rolled out across the Caribbean. The Barbados workshops were held on June 21^st. TechLink’s next stop is scheduled to take place on July 12 in St. Lucia.

For more information, visit www.brightpathfoundation.org.

Agrocentral: A Caribbean Startup Success Story in the making

A beautiful thing about living in the Caribbean is being part of a Diaspora of developing nations, in which people are faced the same issues you contend with at home. Seen through the right lens, the so-called Third World transforms from an environment defined by limitation and constraint, to one in which you’re surrounded daily with opportunities to develop meaningful answers to complex, deep-rooted and inter-related problems, and you have a global market for any marketable solutions that you can deliver!

It’s all a matter of perspective. Somewhere in Jamaica, for example, there’s a farmer growing really high quality produce, but whose assured market is so small that she suffers perennial spoilage. Meanwhile, over in Trinidad and Tobago, there’s an agro-processor who insists he could make it big, if he only had a more consistent quality from his supplier. And up north, in the Bahamas, a medium-sized restaurant is on the verge of breaking through but needs assured delivery of agricultural produce.

Now, if some young, bright, entrepreneurial, innovative minds were to get together, surely they could design a system that allowed the farmer to get to market and find the best offers, and allowed the businessmen to access produce at competitive prices. Just ask 23-year-old Jermaine Henry, one of four thinkers behind AgroCentral, Jamaica’s new digital agricultural clearing house.

AgroCentral is a Web and SMS application that allows businesses to buy directly from farmers. The app was born in October 2013 at Startup Weekend Jamaica (SWJA), where Henry joined up with other 20-somethings Janice Mc Leod and Adrian Thompson to form the team that would eventually claim the top SWJA prize.

“Since then, we’ve moved from idea to prototype,” Henry said, explaining that their agrocentral.co website has undergone a couple of redesigns in the process.

“Our plan for year two is to go into export. In year three, we plan to move into new markets. If it can work here in Jamaica, we’re sure there’ll be other farmers and businesses elsewhere in the world where we can customise and deploy our solution.”

Agro Central again emerged tops, winning an Investment Readiness award when the World Bank, its global entrepreneurship program infoDev, and the University of the West Indies (UWI) launched the Caribbean Mobile Innovation Program (CMIP) in Jamaica on June 10. AgroCentral won an all expense paid trip to the international Startup Festival. Two equal runners-up from Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica will have partial expenses paid to the event.

"We at Connectimass Foundation are very happy about Agrocentral's progress since winning our first Startup Weekend Jamaica last October," said Ingrid Riley, founder of Connectimass, who organised the inaugural SWJA event.

"Since they won, they are being coached by one of our amazing assigned mentors Arthur Phidd, a Jamaican serial entrepreneur who lives in USA and does business in Jamaica, Trinidad and China. He has marshalled them through so many processes in making them a better team and startup. I am not surprised that they won the CMIP Investment Readiness award: they are a smart, passionate, driven team that's very focused on being a Caribbean startup success story. We are happy to be playing a role in their acceleration process."

"The entrepreneurs at today’s launch, show that many of the problems being solved by our mobile apps and IT talent are not just regional ones, but global as well. That's why collaboration is so important,” said Julian Robinson, Jamaica’s minister of State of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining.

CMIP is new partnership to recruit and nurture the next generation of talented mobile entrepreneurs in the Caribbean. The program is a regional initiative executed by the UWI Consortium under the Entrepreneurship Program for Innovation in the Caribbean (EPIC), and funded by the Government of Canada.

"Innovation and entrepreneurship are key drivers for growth. This initiative is part of our efforts to create the right eco-system for young talents in the region to be investment ready and start new businesses that will create value-added jobs," said World Bank Director for the Caribbean, Sophie Sirtaine.