Introdution:
The post-independence experience of Barbados is one of missed opportunity after missed opportunity and nothing demonstrates this more that the Diaspora conference which is now coming to an end in Barbados. Here was a rare opportunity to draw on the collective knowledge, enthusiasms and skills set of the great Barbadian Diaspora to add to the mix of ideas and proposals for the development of this small, but proud island-state, across a number of disciplines, sectors and industries?
Here was an opportunity for overseas-based Barbadians to contribute in a fundamental way – not just through the vulgarity of semi-naked dancing and alcohol-induced unprotected sex – to the short, medium and long-term development of their island home.
Sadly, the notion, first developed under the late David Thompson, has been taken over by a group of people without any idea of how to take forward what was a dynamic and brilliant idea and make it bear fruit. From reports and conversations with people who have attended, the conference was a talking shop, lacking in substance, and acting as a break between the entertainment and recreational shopping.
Intellectual and Cultural Identity:
The concept of Diaspora has its historic roots in the European Jewish tradition but, post the Second World War, is applied to all national, ethnic and religious communities away from their places of origin. This spatial geography of identity has also given rise to interpretative faultlines between these groups. For example, the New York Jewish intellectual movement may have differences of opinion on fundamental issues to those who live in Israel, or Cuban-Americans may have different, at times conflicting, economic outlooks to those who live at home. So too with the Barbadian Diaspora, be they based in North America, Europe, the Caribbean archipelago or Oceania.
Sometimes these differences may be generational: those of use born in the Caribbean may see things differently, and may have different emotions about our island-home, to our children, or their children, or their children’s children. The thing we would like to pretend we have in common are traditional Barbadian values. Only this week two visiting Cubans were talking sentimentally about their love of Barbadian food as a symbol of their connectedness. I know from experience what this feels like every time I meet my New York cousins. Without labouring the point, this raises questions about the organisation of the conference. Few of us want to sit and listen, no matter how polite, to second division politicians talking down to us about development and what we can do for our native home.
The fact is that people of Caribbean cultural heritage have in many cases reached the top of the legal tree in Europe and North America, in education, policing, public administration, business and even journalism. What people are looking for is an exchange of ideas – and here the returnees as a resource are disgracefully underused – of making direct practical contributions to projects, new and existing industries, mentoring and funding. They may, and often do, have experience of community building that they may want to contribute and may be keen to form business and intellectual partnerships with local people. None of these ideas have been developed for this conference, if the programme and reports are correct.
Reaching Out:
The one aspect of this conference that is noticeably absent is the use of digital technology. The entire conference should have been transmitted to every corner of the world through the use of the internet; people should be blogging, tweeting and using other forms of social media; there should have been newsletters, published speeches, participation by the university and the business community. In fact, the university and business people have been noticeable by their absence, or certainly lack of active participation. Building a digital community should be one of the positive outcomes of this conference, and certainly one of the ideas driving this get together. There should have been themes with positional papers running through the meetings. I know of at least one young, bright Barbadian who came down from New York with loads of good ideas who has been left sadly disappointed.
Small Business Office:
Business should be at the centre of the discussions. From experience most of us know that one major problem with forming a limited liability company in Barbados, apart from funding and decent office space, is the bureaucratic muddling involved. First, unless you are an insider you would not even know the first steps to take in registering a company with the relevant authorities In reality this should be a simple one-step process that should not take more than five days from beginning to end: registering the details of the company and the principals, whether digitally or by physical form, the details of which should automatically then be sent electronically to all the relevant authorities.
Establishing a bank account and making contact with frontline advisers – legal, accounts, etc – could be done in a morning and trading should be ready by the following week. As things stand, there is a bureaucratic obstacle course to run, including unnecessary delays, time-consuming meetings, and so on? For those from the Diaspora who want to re-establish links, an archaic and mind-numbing planning system, added to obstreperous and arrogant staff, could sometimes make a difference between going ahead with a plan and abandoning it.
Barbados Diaspora Development Fund:
At a time like this, with pressures on the economy, high unemployment and a business sector partly sitting on its cash or, if not, in dire financial straits, it is clear that government and policymakers are desperately searching for new short-term ideas, if not to rescue a nation in trouble, then to influence the electorate before the forthcoming general election. A Barbados development fund, a closed vehicle, with a target of Bds$500m, to be used exclusively for funding new businesses, excluding the hotel sector, and free of government influence, should be one of the ideas to emerge from this conference.
In simple arithmetic, that would work out at about 50000 people investing Bds$10,000 each, of US$5000 or £3300. That is achievable. On two recent occasions I brought people to Barbados to do business and each time it ended in embarrassing experiences with senior civil servants. Last October I brought a party of people, who were keen to combine attending a wedding with doing business? Meetings were arranged by an influential government department and all the necessary parties were briefed before we arrived in the country. Apart from the chief executive of one agency not going ahead with the meeting, not giving warning and not appointing a junior member of staff to attend in his place, the meetings themselves went very weSo much so, that a time scale for establishing the project was set, beginning in April, and the senior organisers of the new project returned to Britain with great plans to start the business.
However, without explanation, subsequent emails and telephone calls to this most obnoxious of civil servants ended with senior public employees slamming the telephone down on callers, telling them that they were not interested in doing business with them, and other forms of rude behaviour that had they been in any other country they would have been instantly sacked, marched out of the office and given not a single penny in compensation.
I subsequently was told that this person was the former head of another government department notorious for its incompetence, which frequently appears in the Auditor General’s report for its poor management and, frankly, is a waste on public funds. More intriguingly, in a column that I once wrote for a local paper I had cause to refer to them in an unflattering light and, the assumption was, that he was getting his own back.
But this is Barbados, where incompetents can often be found in positions of influence, and who can often damage the good name of the country because they are members of a powerful union or have influential political or social connections. The other introduction I made, a senior mortgage provider, with over £1bn in lending on his books, came to Barbados after much encouragement from me, liked what he saw, a minister (who must remain nameless) put aside time to see him, a senior retired politician did the same, both with great success, then one of our leading lawyers – a QC to boot – when approached for legal advice, after one of his junior colleagues had delayed providing the necessary documentation, proceeded to talk him out of doing business in Barbados by telling him a story of how knowledgeable he was about business. The man, an expert on mortgage lending, was not seeking financial or business advice, all he wanted was someone locally to tweak his documents and registration, which would in the main be done by his lawyers in Britain.
Analysis and Conclusion
Quite often Barbadians living overseas can make an enormously positive contribution to the development of the country. Contrary to the ignorance that often masquerades as knowledge, having a passport and travelling to some other country does not remove our Barbadianness. On the contrary, sometimes – the majority of times? – it causes it to focus more on what it means to be Barbadian in a way that we would not have had we not left the country.
The return of native Barbadians should usher in a new spirit of collaboration and experimentation, to an exchange of ideas and creative cooperation, to new ways of seeing old problems. After spending two years organising a conference, government has used the opportunity to appropriate what should have been a people’s event. However, we should not let this failure demoralise us; what we must do is use the opportunity to drive government out of this part of our lives. We can organise bigger and better conferences than this.
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