Overview:
Port-au-Prince-based incubator Banj and its companions have launched Antreprann.ht, Haiti’s first digital database for entrepreneurs. The platform connects six key sectors to deal with useful resource gaps, coaching wants and funding shortages, supporting startup creation and progress regardless of the nation’s financial and safety challenges.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Banj, a co-working area and Google-powered accelerator in Port-au-Prince, together with over a dozen key companions, formally launched antreprann.ht— a digital platform designed to attach and strengthen Haiti’s entrepreneurial ecosystem— on Monday, Aug. 11.
In accordance with the initiators, the digital platform — the primary of its variety within the nation — will assist entrepreneurship by connecting six sectors: incubators and accelerators, the non-public sector, schooling, authorities, donors and the diaspora as a basis for the ecosystem.
As knowledge turns into accessible on the location, it can present startups and mission holders with entry to real-time data on funding, mentorship, coaching, workspaces and different assets to rework concepts into sustainable companies.
“We are going to form this expertise day-to-day,” stated Marc Alain Boucicaut, Banj founder and CEO.
“Maybe at some point we can current [to the world] Haiti’s model of how you can construct an ecosystem.”
“With endurance, motivation, and everybody’s goodwill, we are able to make Haiti an instance for the world on how you can develop an ecosystem and assist entrepreneurship in a rustic not like the US,” the younger and dynamic Haitian entrepreneur added.
The initiative grew from greater than a 12 months of collaboration, beginning with an April 2024 digital assembly. Common on-line and in-person discussions among the many ANTREPRANN collective led to joint incubation tasks and shared methods.
Filling vital gaps
Organizers say the collective platform addresses the fragmented nature of current assist for Haitian entrepreneurs, who typically lack coaching, area and entry to financing. These challenges are compounded by Haiti’s worsening financial and safety crises, which have pressured many small companies to shut.
“The target is evident: work collectively to create situations so extra Haitian entrepreneurs can succeed, innovate and create worth at house,” stated mission supervisor Vladimir Jean.
“The thought is to not set up only a easy occasion. It’s to decide on a course the place Haitian entrepreneurs can succeed, create assets, enhance their buying energy and transfer towards prosperity.”
Marc Alain Boucicaut, Initiator of the Antreprann mission, Founder and CEO of Banj
ANTREPRANN, Haitian Creole for “Undertake,” attracts on methodologies from the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how (MIT) and Harvard College however adapts them to Haiti’s realities. The strategy builds “communities of apply” among the many six sectors, aiming for an inclusive, resilient and related ecosystem.
The collective now consists of 16 incubators and entrepreneurial organizations, greater than 28 companions and over 40 companies for entrepreneurs. Thus far, it has incubated 41 tasks, created not less than 213 jobs and elevated annual mission launches from one in 2024 to 16 in 2025.
Members embrace, notably, the Haitian Heart for Management and Excellence (CLE Haiti), the CASELI Basis, the Grand North Innovation Hub (PiGraN), COMPARET Collaborative Distribution System and Quisqueya College. Boucicaut, a Harvard Enterprise graduate and former MIT stakeholder engagement and advertising director, says the mission is ongoing and invitations extra stakeholders — particularly within the diaspora and state establishments — to hitch.
“This isn’t donor-driven,” Boucicaut stated. “It’s the results of incubators in Haiti pooling assets and collaborating.”
“The work of the incubators within the collective curiosity proves that we’re constructing, collectively, an ecosystem that may assist construction and energize entrepreneurship in Haiti,” Jean added
Greater than a launch
The Aug. 11 occasion featured 5 panel discussions on constructing entrepreneurial ecosystems in low-income international locations, with subjects starting from the function of the state and diaspora to girls’s empowerment, non-public sector partnerships and universities’ function in entrepreneurship.
The passion was palpable among the many many contributors on the occasion. They confirmed nice motivation regardless of the present state of affairs.
All through the day, contributors exchanged concepts, assessed Haiti’s present entrepreneurial local weather and shared success tales.
But, Boucicaut emphasised, the collective’s objective stays to search out the mandatory means and create the proper situations to foster extra success tales from Haitian entrepreneurs.
“The thought is to not set up only a easy occasion,” Boucicaut stated. “It’s to decide on a course the place Haitian entrepreneurs can succeed, create assets, enhance their buying energy and transfer towards prosperity.”