Africa is rising,with one main reason being the increased and sustained efforts on boosting intra-African trade. Traditionally, the trade of the individual countries in Africa followed routes and patterns established since colonial times. The African Free Trade Continental Area, the largest free trade area in the world in terms of the number of particpating countries, is changing that narrative. Given the massive opportunities arising from greater African trade, there are also good options for boosting the African-Caribbean trade and investment partnership. In this context, Caribbean Export joined the landmark Intra-African Trade Fair 2023 (IATF 2023) in Cairo, Egypt, last week.

IATF 2023, held from November 9-15, unfolded as a pivotal platform for fostering economic ties and cross-border collaboration while showcasing the continent’s vibrant diversity. This pioneering initiative welcomed thousands of business owners and trade experts, providing an invaluable forum for meaningful discussions on pressing topics. These included private sector development, trade facilitation, investments, digital trade, the importance of digital financial inclusion and quality infrastructure. Delegates gleaned insights that transcended borders, laying the groundwork for a future marked by strengthened economic partnerships and mutual growth, including the emphasis on business.

Recognizing the strategic imperative of enhancing collaboration, our Executive Director, Deodat Maharaj expressed his enthusiasm at participating in this significant event. The invitation extended by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to serve as the Caribbean Ambassador for IATF 2023 demonstrated the growing recognition of the mutual benefits that lie in advancing the alliance between Africa and the Caribbean.

Reflecting on his participation, Mr. Maharaj emphasised: “The imperative to deepen the trade and investment relationship with Africa is clear. Witnessing the Caribbean contingent in Cairo, as we celebrate the pinnacle of African excellence, engaging in the exchange of ideas and fostering new connections demonstrates our commitment to this objective. My sincere congratulations to Afreximbank for adeptly orchestrating yet another successful event.”

Throughout various panel discussions, the common challenges faced by Africa and the Caribbean, particularly the need for bankable projects, became evident. Addressing these challenges not only requires innovative solutions, but also a heightened level of collaboration. The event’s dynamic celebration of the creative sector underscored the potential of the arts as a formidable catalyst for economic opportunities between Africa and the Caribbean. It highlighted the prospect of the creative sector becoming the next frontier for trade between these two regions, offering a promising avenue for mutual growth and exploration.

The Caribbean actively participated in the event led by Barbados and St Lucia. Caribbean Export’s role as an IATF 2023 Ambassador, coming just months after our first trade and investment mission to West Africa, amplifies the momentum established for Caribbean businesses to actively collaborate with their African counterparts and foster mutually beneficial opportunities. This is one sure way to deepen our trade and investment partnership with Africa. It is about less talk and more business.

Dr. Lynette Holder and Dr. Leroy Almendarez, have been reelected as Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson of Caribbean Export Development Agency’s Board of Directors this past October 26, 2023 at latest board meeting held in Nassau, The Bahamas. Their unopposed re-election underscores a strong endorsement of dedicated leadership in the midst of ongoing regional challenges. In recent years, the Agency has faced the task of repositioning itself, and the Board, collectively, has shown steadfast support throughout this transformative period.

Caribbean Export operates with a profound mandate – to foster sustainable economic development and regional integration throughout the Caribbean. It aspires to uplift the lives and prospects of the diverse nations within the Caribbean region. This commitment is reflected in the Agency’s multifaceted efforts aimed at enhancing trade, investment, innovation, and entrepreneurship – all essential ingredients for the advancement of this vibrant and culturally rich community.

At the heart of Caribbean Export’s operations is its Board of Directors, a group of dedicated individuals, representing the 15 member states of CARIFORUM, who serve as the Agency’s guiding compass, steering it towards the attainment of its goals and ensuring that its efforts contribute to the betterment of the region.

Regarding her re-election to the Board, Dr. Holder stated: “ The overwhelming support from my regional colleagues has been both humbling and an encouragement that we are on the right track in making the agency fit-for-purpose at this time. Caribbean businesses and by extension people, expect their regional export development agency to provide the programmes and interventions needed to make a tangible difference in their lives and livelihoods as we confront a myriad of internal and external challenges. I am appreciative to every Director for reposing the confidence in me to lead the team for another term.”

One of the Agency’s core principles is the practice of good governance. Transparency, accountability, and ethical conduct are the cornerstones of Caribbean Export’s operations. This commitment not only ensures the organisation’s integrity but also positions it as a beacon of hope and opportunity for the people of the Caribbean region.

Together with the collective wisdom of the Board of Directors, Caribbean Export is well-poised to realise its vision of a prosperous and integrated Caribbean, where economic growth and cultural richness can coexist harmoniously, bringing prosperity and opportunities to the nations and people of the region.

What is the Digital Check-up?

Are you a micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (MSME) looking to navigate the digital landscape successfully? The Digital Check-up is the key to unlocking your digital potential. The Digital Check-up is a powerful diagnostic tool, designed to assess and evaluate the digital capabilities and readiness of a small business. The Check-up will assist the owners and/or managers of MSMEs to understand the current level of digital maturity of the business, identify areas for improvement, and provide comprehensive recommendations to guide digital adoption, consistent with their digital level of maturity.

Assessing your Digital Readiness

To determine the level of maturity of your business you will be required to answer a series of questions in seven (7) crucial areas of digital transformation, such as online presence, digital marketing, e-commerce, data management, and technology infrastructure. The platform’s built-in analytics and algorithms will analyse the responses to provide an assessment of your business’s digital strengths and weaknesses.

Your Personalised Roadmap to Success

One of the most significant benefits of the Digital Check-up is the actionable recommendations it offers based on your digital maturity level. After completing the assessment, you’ll receive a PDF document with targeted strategies to take your business to the next level of digitalization. The project includes other components linked to the Check-up that your company will benefit from, including free access to courses as part of learning tracks on the Caribbean Digital Transformation Institute (CDTI), an E-learning Management Platform designed specifically for this project.

The Digital Check-up provided under the CDTI Project, a 3-year initiative funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Implemented by the Caribbean Export Development Agency, is designed with MSMEs in mind.

The Check-up is modeled on a similar tool used by thousands of businesses in over 13 Latin-American countries. This version has the benefits of improvements informed by lessons learnt from its previous deployment and use in these countries.

Why should you use the Digital Check-up?

In addition to learning about your digital maturity level and your strengths and weaknesses in digitalization, here’s why the Digital Check-up is an essential tool for MSMEs:

• Benchmarking Against Industry Standards:
  • The tool will assist you in benchmarking against industry standards or best practices. This comparison provides a clear roadmap for improvement and helps you set achievable goals.
• Opportunities for Innovation:
  • By identifying gaps or areas with low digital maturity, your organization can explore innovative solutions and technologies that have the potential to drive growth, enhance efficiency, and improve competitiveness.
• Enhanced Customer Experience:
  • The Check-up helps identify gaps in your customer engagement, user experience, and digital touchpoints. Addressing these gaps can lead to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, as well as increased sales and market share.
• Cost Optimization and Efficiency Improvements:
  • Streamlining your operations, automating tasks, and adopting digital tools, can optimize resource allocation, reduce costs and improve overall efficiency.
• Strategic Decision-Making:
  • Understanding your company’s digital strengths and weaknesses, empowers you to align digital initiatives with your business objectives, allocate resources effectively, and prioritize investments that deliver maximum value and impact.

Your Path to Digital Transformation

Once you’ve completed the Digital Check-up and received your personalized recommendations, your journey toward digital transformation becomes clearer. Here are some concrete next steps:

Access targeted courses on our online learning management platform, the Caribbean Digital Transformation Institute. These courses are part of learning tracks that seek to address the knowledge and skills needs of businesses based on their level of digital maturity.

Collaborate with a digital transformation services provider or advisor armed with data-driven insights, from the Check-Up, to help your business create a tailored digitalization and investment strategy. This strategy can be instrumental in securing funding from various sources to support your digitalization efforts. Having a data-driven, information-rich strategy and investment plan increases your likelihood of success of attracting and receiving funding or other types of support.

By completing the Digital Check-up and accessing its direct benefits, your company gains a competitive advantage in exploiting the growing opportunities for digitalization support from various agencies.

Click here to take the Digital Check-up today!

The EU Delegation in Guyana in the context of the EU Global Gateway has organized an EU Economic Mission to Guyana to be held in Georgetown from November 20-22nd with more than 20 companies from 8 EU Member States.

Deputy Director General of the EU’s Department for International Partnerships (INTPA) Ms Myriam Ferran, will lead the Economic Mission that is composed of companies from different sectors for the development of Guyana such as renewable energy, agriculture and forestry, logistics and infrastructure, ICT, medical and pharmaceuticals and hospitality and eco-tourism.

The mission comes at a decisive time for Guyana to undertake a green and inclusive growth model, which is the EU-LAC Global Gateway Investment Agenda (GGIA) objective. This initiative is part of the Global Gateway, the European Union’s strategy to boost smart, clean, and secure connections in digital, energy, and transport sectors and to strengthen health, education, and research systems worldwide.

The Economic mission is organized in partnership with Trade Promotion Europe and the Office of Investment of Guyana, with the support of the Private Sector Commission, the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association, and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce.
The 3-day event will take place at the Marriot Georgetown and will include a seminar, business-to-business meetings, and field visits.

Companies in EU member states or Guyana that want to participate in the economic mission can visit the landing page https://nexconsulting.kartra.com/page/rGU45

What they have in common is an island, a material, but also unique know-how. Some twenty artists, designers and entrepreneurs from Haiti and the Dominican Republic worked together, rigorously and perseveringly, over several years to put together an original collection of 153 ornaments, to be presented in June 2023 under the aegis of Caribbean Export, with funding from the European Union.

Santo Domingo, Thursday June 22, 6 p.m., in the first exhibition room, busts of mannequins dressed in sober velvet appear, revealing their finery in stone, horn, metal, wood… With particular dexterity and creativity, Haitian and Dominican designers have played with materials as one plays with brushes to reveal to the world a collective collection of exceptional works through a new Caribbean brand “Symbiosis”.

We’re at Quinta Dominica, in the heart of the Zona Colonial. The spotlight is on the event. Red and green jasper from Haiti mingle with larimar and amber from the Dominican Republic, while metals are joined by fibers, horn and wood or coconut in a dazzling symbiosis. There is both unity and uniqueness, and above all a remarkable enthusiasm on everyone’s part for this exhibition and the project that gave rise to it. As Anny Abate, the exhibition’s curator in charge of its installation, put itIt’s a project that has strength, that expresses something and that seeks its balance. The challenge of the Symbiose exhibition is to connect the creators’ work, giving each of them their own space, without changing the meaning…”

In the beginning, a Taino theme…

It all began in 2019, with the launch of a technical assistance project aimed at strengthening the production capacities of the crafts value chain in the two neighboring countries. This project, part of the “Trade and Private Sector” component of the Haiti-Dominican Republic Bi-national Cooperation Program, financed by the European Union and implemented by Caribbean Export, the only trade and investment promotion organization for the CARIFORUM countries, has truly fostered the synergies desired by the program throughout the process, which are focused on co-promotion and co-production.

From the outset, the idea of ajoint, exportable jewelry collection with a defined Caribbean identification, is proposed as the culmination of the Taino project. Symbiosis, the brand that was born, was intended as a collaborative encounter between Haitian and Dominican designers, based on what we have in common“explains Philippe Dodard, then Director of ENARTS, Ecole Nationale des Arts, some of whose students also took part in this project through exchanges between the two training institutions, ENARTS in Haiti and CENADARTE in the DR.

16 designers in perfect symbiosis

Nine Haitian artists and seven from the Dominican Republic took part in this adventure. Two names come up regularly in their testimonials: that of the famous designer Jenny Polanco, without whom the project would not have seen the light of day and who unfortunately succumbed to covid before seeing it come to fruition, and that of Jorge Caridad, the “master” of stone, founder of the amber and larimar museums, who opened his workshop and his arms wide to all the participants, to share his talent and his knowledge of the mineral, the raw material of most of the jewels on display.

These sessions remain memorable and particularly enriching for everyone. “At the start of the project, none of us Haitians were jewelers or knew anything about stones, and we met specialists in DR. Working together on cutting and polishing techniques was completely new to us.“says Sandra Russo, who accompanied the project. “In Haiti, we have a very ancient tradition and techniques for working with horn and wood. On Michel Châtaigne’s initiative, the Bureau des Mines d’Haïti offered stones then unknown to the Dominicans, such as quartz, jasper, malachite and azurite.“.

Sharing know-how…

This exchange of material know-how, as much as the contribution of new stones, seems to have inspired craftsmen and artists in both countries.

Gisselle Mancebo Castillo, a well-known name in larimar jewelry, exhibited a dozen magnificent sautoirs, blending the blues, reds, yellows and greens of the island’s stones in a kaleidoscope of colors: “It’s the first time I’ve worked with these stones, and it’s been an incredible experience“. Gimarie Grullon, designer of the Tiaggi brand, has also adopted Haitian red and yellow jasper, harmoniously blended with amber in a remarkable creation. For her, it’s a wonderful experience as a designer, “as well as an honor and a pleasure to work with Haitian artisans“.

New designers

Right next to it, a delicate and original finery decorates not only a bust in a majestic way, covering shoulders, arms, chest and even the head. The stones are soberly linked by copper wire and chain. This sober yet intriguing creation by Garibaldi Jean Baptiste captivates visitors. Just like that of Emmanuel Saincilus, whose artistic universe as a painter, visual artist and sculptor is reflected in his highly original hammered goldsmith’s work. These young Haitian designers, graduates of ENARTS, weren’t there to talk about the creative experience, but their creations spoke for them.

Michel Châtaigne, a Haitian fashion icon with extensive experience in the design of clothing, shoes and accessories, signed his first metal jewelry creations here, using the cut-iron technique and combining copper, brass and stones. It’s the same technique that inspired Nora Leurebours of Tipik Créations, accustomed to designing fashion accessories and objects for the home from paper maché, cow horn or natural fiber, and who found herself inspired by the metals and stones available to her creativity.

Blend of materials…

Happy combinations of stones and other materials such as horn and wood were found in the work of several designers such as Gisela Maria Lozada, from the Shelaia Store brand (RD), or Barbara Taveras (RD), each of whom delicately combines wood, shells, amber or larimar. This was also characteristic of the highly ethnic pieces presented by Cristina Nuñez, always rich in endemic inputs from the Dominican Republic such as coconut, bone, amber or larimar, to which she discreetly associated a few stones from Haiti.

Daphnée Floréal, who trained in jewelry making at the Altos de Chavon design school, has had fun enhancing her Bijou Lakay creations (pectoral necklace), where horn is very present, with a few accents of new colors and materials.

An expert in the fusion of tribal elements and urban design, Martine Bourjolly Cantave, Haitian jewelry designer of the Héritage Nomade brand and host of the only jewelry workshop ever held in Haiti, presented a number of striking pieces from her version of the Symbiose brand.

All first times

Like Martine Bourjolly Cantave, Haitian designers have often chosen to stay close to the Taino theme. Régine Tesserot Fabius and Ariel Fabius, designers of furniture and home accessories, have thus created pieces resolutely inspired by Taino designs and objects, sometimes incorporating traditional materials (leather, horn, wood) as well as the stones fashioned and mounted for them in Dominican workshops. “We were led to create on a theme and in a medium new to us,” they report.

An architect by profession, Fatima Polanco developed a passion for jewelry design, and proved herself a virtuoso in the palette of indigenous stones. Symbiosis seems to have inspired his imagination with a rich collection of all the island’s stones arranged with originality.

Tangible evidence of collaboration

The first edition of Symbiosis, both a project and a brand, showcases the creation of handmade jewelry and fashion accessories using the island’s raw materials. For Leonel Naut, Director of Caribbean Export, this first collection is a tangible testimony and the product of a collaboration that highlights the island’s exceptional potential and artisanal talent. “ This collection promotes binational dialogue between the two countries, thanks to the collaborative spirit with which these pieces have been created. It’s an avant-garde project. A collection that can bring so many positive results, it’s moving…” he declared, underlining the extent to which the island’s creative and cultural diversity and the development of new value-added products can enhance the exportable offer and contribute to the sector’s economic development.