Soul of Haiti Foundation aims to boost investment in the Caribbean country, writes PAMELA DUNCAN

AMONG THE guests at this year’s Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards were a delegation of Haitian business leaders and policymakers who have a special relationship with the competition.

The men are part of the Soul of Haiti Foundation, which was set up earlier this year by 80 Irish business leaders who have been finalists in the Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. The aim of the group is to improve economic and social circumstances in Haiti.

Jean-Maurice Buteau, an adviser to the Soul of Haiti Foundation, was part of the delegation, which came to engage with Irish investors and inform them on incentives to investing in the Caribbean country. “There is great potential for Irish entrepreneurs to invest in Haiti, to create jobs . . . and to open markets for them in the region of the Caribbean and the US,” he says.

The delegation met potential Irish investors at a sector investment session chaired by Neil O’Leary, chief executive of Ion Equity and chairman of Topaz.

The group also had a meeting with Denis O’Brien, who through his mobile-phone company, Digicel, has made the single- biggest investment in the Caribbean country in its history.

The next step is for some of the potential investors who met the delegation to visit Haiti in January on an investment mission organised by the foundation.

Buteau says Haiti can take wider lessons from Ireland’s economic development in areas such as tax-free and duty-free trading. He adds that Haiti, where half the population is illiterate, needs to learn from Ireland’s example in using education as a building block for economic success.

“Our mission here was not only business to create jobs, which is very much needed in our country, but [to look] at how Ireland can help in nation building.”

The delegation also hopes to establish diplomatic ties between Ireland and Haiti. They had a meeting with Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, which Buteau describes as “positive”.

Irish entrepreneurs have already had a palpable influence in Haiti, says Buteau, who has been involved in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year programme since the group first visited Haiti in 2007.

The idea was to get the entrepreneurs to see the problems that exist in Haiti, one of the world’s least developed countries.

Of a population of 10 million, 70 per cent live below the poverty line and unemployment stands at 54 per cent. One child dies every hour from starvation, and almost one-quarter of children under five suffer from malnutrition.

The entrepreneurs were able to use their skills to address some of the problems and help improve living conditions in the communities they visited.

Buteau gives the example of a fishing community who were no longer able to catch fish in the waters near the coast. The entrepreneurs provided boats and training so the fishermen could reach fish further out to sea.

By providing buildings and solar panels to the isolated village, they also enabled the community to produce ice to chill excess fish for transport and sale.

In another community, the entrepreneurs provided wind turbines, generators and farm equipment to allow the local people to irrigate a remote valley to diversify their crops.

After the crops are grown, the project hopes to create an industry in milling and distributing the grain. Essentially, Buteau says, “they have created entrepreneurs with that mentality of entrepreneurship”.

Buteau says the opportunities provided by the entrepreneurs are fantastic, but he believes Haiti has more to offer investors than humanitarian projects. He hopes Irish investors will see this, and invest in the country.

“You have to look beyond the poverty and see that these people are fighters, they are survivors, they are struggling for life . . . You see people who are striving to do things, and their resources in terms of being creative are unbelievable – what they do with what they have . . . This is entrepreneurship in its truest sense,” Buteau says.

“These people are very proud . . . They just want to be given the opportunity.”