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Tamu Petra Browne (DBA-Tech Entrepreneurship)

Creator of the HER Business Model | Helping Female Founders to High-Growth Entrepreneurship | Public Speaker I Entrepreneurship Trainer & Accelerator Creator I AI Startup Founderl

November 24, 2024

Yet another Global Entrepreneurship Week is in the twilight. Another year lauding the tenacity and grit of the small business professional. Awards that should soothe the strain and pain of toiling in ecosystems designed for the flourishing of others through foreign direct investment policies. Galas where we dance aimlessly in the delirium of an air filled with the jargon meant to delude the oppressed – sustainability, scaling, growth, while delusion sits at the head table tapping his/her head to the beat of the past pouring into the present. The Caribbean has a PhD in Meaningless Optics.

I know – a very sombre and cynical introduction. So, let me provide a more critical and unbiased review. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2023/24 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report: Reshaping Economies and Communities “highlights an upward trend in women’s startup and established business ownership…Women’s established business ownership rates across the 30 countries compared have also gone up from 4.2% to the current 5.9%. High rates were particularly strong for women in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Lithuania, Puerto Rico and Thailand…The Report reveals that women remain significantly involved in high-potential ventures in the 45 countries surveyed in 2023. One in three high-growth entrepreneurs and nearly two in five export-oriented startups were led by women. Countries like China, Colombia, Iran, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Venezuela showed particularly high rates of women bringing new innovations to market…Entrepreneurial perceptions among women have improved significantly over the past two decades, with a 79% increase in perceived business opportunities and a 27% increase in startup skills. However, fear of failure rates have also risen by over half among women”.

Data can be misleading. No CARICOM country is included in the report and hence the data cannot be applied to our regional space. However, the data are touted (yes data is plural it’s not a grammatical error) during this week. The reality is that there is a dearth of the richness of data required and the dearth of research in the region in meaningful ways that can drive policy development. Perhaps it is by choice, as within the region we bend the knee to neocolonial policy proclivity (FDI) at the expense of meaningful indigenous private sector development. Our lived experience finds that there are no developmental policies for the most part ( I am generalizing of course) that are laser-focused on scaling Micros to Small to Medium to Large enterprises. Instead their are fragmented performative gestures meant to veil the gap of insufficiency.

Professor Emeritus (University of the West Indies) Selwyn Ryan, in his reflection piece on the 50th anniversary of Trinidad and Tobago’s independence, Black Entrepreneurship in Post-Independence Trinidad and Tobago examined Prime Minister Eric Williams’ policy of “industrialization by invitation” and it’s effect on black entrepreneurship in the Republic. The policy is synonymous with the much beloved policy of Foreign Direct Investment that the region has embraced even to this day. Critics of Williams’ policy as presented in the piece opined that “black capitalism disguises white control just as black government disguises colonialism”. I posit that though there is significant nuance to be explored in that statement, our constant gaze on the outside and the other, our fashioning of policies designed for the other which create our internal smothering should be explored with a clear and critical eye. Our lens is murky, outward scanning and blind to the internal latent economic possibilities. I will leave it here for now.

Tamu Petra Browne