Hope for Haiti

Δημοσιεύθηκε: 7 Μαΐου 2015 - 23:12

Sabrina Intervol dons a baby-blue overall, her hair and feet covered, as she passes through an airlock to enter a sterile, white room. As a good technology professional, she carefully ensures the outer door is closed before opening the inner one, behind which more than two dozen colleagues are busy assembling electronics.

This is not Silicon Valley, nor an iPad factory in Shenzhen, but a small manufacturing facility in Port-au-Prince, the capital of the poorest country in the Americas. It assembles the Surtab - an Android-powered, low-cost tablet with "Made in Haiti" proudly emblazoned on its aluminium back cover.

Surtab is one example of how entrepreneurialism in different areas - moving from farming traditional crops such as coffee to establishing thriving businesses to produce high-tech products - is slowly making inroads in a country usually known for poverty and its humanitarian crises, particularly after an earthquake five years ago shattered the capital.

"I used to see electronics made in China, or Japan, or the United States; now we are making some here," Intervol says. "At first, people did not trust Haitians, but we have shown we can, and that makes me proud." She used to work at a car wash. After a three-month course on handling materials, she now assembles tablets.

"These workers show that Haiti can do high-tech manufacturing and assembly; that Haitians are capable of producing something that is good and cool; and that this country is not a pariah that can only export cheap apparel and mangoes," says Belgian entrepreneur Maarten Boute, one of Surtab's founders and its chief executive.

The company was started two years ago by Boute, who is also chairman of Digicel Haiti, the country's main mobile carrier, in partnership with Richard Coles of Multiwear, a Haitian Textile company - also Surtab's largest shareholder - alongside Danish philanthropists Ulla and JP Bak. It was supported with an initial investment of $600,000 and a $200,000 grant from the US Agency for International Development.

The company employs 70 people and produces about 4,000 tablets a month. Employees earn a base salary of almost $7 per day. A bonus per completed unit pushes wages to $13, almost three times Haiti's minimum of about $4.70 a day. Some hope private investment initiatives like this will mean the number of people leaving the country will fall, says Laurent Lamothe, a telecoms entrepreneur and former prime minister.

Surtab was based on the Aakash, a $40 education-focused tablet produced in India for poor consumers. The most basic model has a pricetag of roughly $100 and comes with WiFi, but prices rise to $285 for those with a high-definition screen and 3G phone connection. All come with seven-inch screens, and a 10-inch version is in the works.

Surtab - a play on "sure, it's a tablet" as a response to the scepticism of many about Haiti's capabilities - has shipped products to educational institutions in, for example, Kenya and Jamaica. Last year, socialist Venezuela ordered 10,000 of the tablets. Surtab has plans for the Haitian market with its "mobile classroom", a kit with tablets, a mini-server, a self-powered storage facility and education-orientated software.

"There's a real market for education, a market for people who want to support 'Made in Haiti' products and a real market for non-governmental organisations that want to have good but affordable products that support the local economy," says Boute.

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>The factory, he says, has capacity to produce 8,000 tablets a month with Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese parts. "At first, people thought we were not going to be able to make them; now the challenge is to sell them," explains Diderot Musset, the company's general manager. Although the main focus is education, some local companies are buying the tablets in bulk for their employees to buy in turn by monthly instalments. They are also sold in Digicel's retail outlets across Haiti. "We are trying to have more Haitians have 'Made in Haiti' tablets in their hands," says Musset.

That may already be happening. Not far from the assembly plant in Port-au-Prince's industrial park, a man is in the Rebo Expresso coffee shop sipping a latte and reading on a Surtab, surrounded by fellow customers sitting on sofas or wooden chairs.

<>"There was never a [western-style] coffee shop in Haiti before," says Gilbert Gonzales, a Haitian who studied business in the US before returning home - in another example of how business entrepreneurialism is making inroads into the country. After initially marrying into the family of the shareholders, he became vice-president of Rebo, a Haitian coffee-bean company.

"We were not sure people would leave their house or office, where they traditionally get coffee for free. But there is a need," says Gonzales, who is now exploring a franchise in the US. While his new coffee shops appeal to the aspirant Haitian middle class as well as expatriates and tourists, he also started a project targeted at a broader segment of the population. Rebo has developed a network of more than 100 micro-entrepreneurs: mobile street coffee sellers who operate from two hubs in the capital.

One of those sellers is Jean Jeannes, who has just returned the cart from which he earns his living after a long morning shift in the sun, selling coffee and sandwiches to passers-by. In the courtyard, dozens of identical pushcarts are lined up, each with the Creole slogan "Ti Pilon" (mortar and pestle) on the side, the symbol of ground coffee. "I heard this was a very good business; everyone drinks coffee," says Jeannes.

Each sales representative - the majority are women - is self-employed, paying on credit first thing in the morning for a cart and reimbursing when they return it from sales of the coffee and peanut-butter sandwiches. Gonzales says each seller typically earns two or three times the minimum wage. He explains that applicants must be aged under 45, be screened as healthy and then undergo a two-day training course covering hygiene, basic business skills and understanding coffee.

Gonzales' network has challenged the country's traditional coffee shops, which burn through a large sack of charcoal each week in the course of roasting the beans. By offering the drink in paper cups with lids, sugar and stirrers, Gonzales' sellers allow busy Haitians to buy better-quality coffee which they can take with them on their journey into work.

Gonzales is now focusing on securing high-quality coffee volumes at a time of slow yields and a recent infestation. "You get used to thriving in crises," he says, adding that Haitian farmers, working on small plots of land, have long failed to invest sufficiently in new plants and suitable methods. That is why his next project - if he can persuade the government to help - includes large-scale coffee farms. "We have difficulties with access to capital, infrastructure, water and electricity," says Gonzales. Yet, like many entrepreneurs in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, he is optimistic. "I see opportunities everywhere," he says.

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