In four months from now, from June 20-22, 2019, Haiti will host its third annual ‘Haiti Tech Summit’ founded by Christine Souffrant Ntim, a Haitian-American, Forbes 30 under-30 entrepreneur. The event has even been dubbed the ‘Davos of the Caribbean’ and has boasted speakers such as Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, and Silicon Valley heavyweight Ben Horowitz, along with representatives from tech giants Google, Facebook and Airbnb. Amid attracting investors and visitors to Haiti’s shores, one of the main purposes of the summit is to redefine the Haitian narrative through disruption. The summit has been created to be a 13-year initiative to transform Haiti through entrepreneurship and innovation by the year 2030.
The beauty of the entire collaboration is that it was accomplished by a team of young Haitians, all under age 30. Ntim and her team hit on something quite interesting, that “Haiti is not open for business, it is open for disruption”. The founder noted the fact that emerging markets are often evaluated on “their capacity for formal industry development” rather than the potential for new start-ups to correct gaps in these fields.
The summit serves as a forum to inspire and incite Haitians to invent their own disruptions that address the gaps in their economy using world-renowned expertise. If the event continues at this pace, Haiti could truly serve as a global case study for transformative change through technological revolution; change not led by governments or international funding agencies, but by a team of young Haitians looking to redefine the narrative of the new Haiti. Maybe the rest of the Caribbean could take a page from their books.
Keithlin Caroo is the founder of Helen’s Daughters a Saint Lucian non-profit with a special focus on rural women’s economic development through improved market access, adaptive agricultural techniques, and capacity-building. It was formed in 2016 in a winning proposal for UN Women’s Empower Women Champions for Change Program. To learn more about the initiative, visit:
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