The EU-LAC Digital Accelerator is an initiative financed under the Neighborhood, Development & International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI-Global Europe) in the framework of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance, focused on fostering multi-stakeholder and private sector collaboration, competitiveness, digital skills and innovation, through the establishment of a regional EU-LAC Digital Accelerator.
The EU-LAC Digital Accelerator works as a multi-sided platform connecting business opportunities from corporates with innovative startups and SMEs between the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean. The initiative is formed by 10 organisations distributed in these 2 continents consolidating 1 strong team.
Do you want to know who is involved? Do not miss our ‘Meet the Team’!
Today, we are honoured to count on two colleagues from our partner Caribbean Export Development Agency. Read below the interview with Dr Damie Sinanan, Manager of Competitiveness and Export Promotion and watch the video of Mr Phillip Jackson, Advisor on Innovation and Digital Business. Both explain their institution’s commitment to ensuring that all stakeholders receive the maximum benefits through the partnerships generated by the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator open innovation ecosystem.
Do not miss them!
Hi Damie, can you tell us about your position at the organization?
Hello, I am the Manager of Competitiveness and Export Promotion at Caribbean Export Development Agency. I play a pivotal role in driving the export sector’s growth and competitiveness within the Caribbean region, supporting businesses in expanding their market reach and contributing to economic development.
We would like to know more about your organization, what are you focused on and what is your field of expertise?
Caribbean Export is a leading agency promoting trade and investment in the Caribbean. Our goal is to boost economic transformation by assisting businesses in increasing exports and attracting investment. Operating in Barbados, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, we utilize innovative strategies to expand market presence and enter valuable markets, while contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals. We prioritize the growth of businesses in sectors like agro-processing, light manufacturing, green economy, and the digital economy. Additionally, we actively attract foreign investment in renewable energy, agricultural technology, ICT and digital business and transport and logistics.
Now, how is this linked to the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator? Can you explain the role you envision to play at this meaningful project?
The EU-LAC Digital Accelerator provides unique opportunities for our digital entrepreneurs to find and accelerate a path to growth through mutually beneficial partnerships with larger corporations in participating countries. This is consistent with our current strategic focus on digital transformation, AgTech, and climate smart technologies adoption. The programme’s methodologies, in addition to ensuring the integrity, agility and impact of the programme, provide for Caribbean Export an approach to gain deeper insights into the digital transformation policy landscape of the region as well as identifying and profiling the key actors in the digital development ecosystem. These insights will benefit many of our other initiatives focused on digital business development.
What are the main actions/activities you are working/will work on in the project that you are most excited about?
We are excited about developing high quality stakeholder maps of the Region’s digital entrepreneurship and digital development ecosystem. This will better inform our approaches to building strategic partnerships and achieve synergies in our efforts. We are also looking forward to identifying and engaging with the digital startups, scaleups and SMEs who can benefit from the resources provided by the Programme and more importantly identify and accelerate a path to growth through strategic partnership with a matching Corporate. We look forward to fully supporting the matching and acceleration processes and services.
At the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator, what is the positive impact you hope to generate?
Over the course of the programme we want at least 10 Caribbean digital startups to establish firm partnerships with large Corporates accelerating their growth and boosting their business confidence.
What do you think are the biggest challenges to boosting digital cooperation between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean? And the keys to solve them?
One of the major challenges would be to identify the right digital priority areas generating challenges that provide real matching opportunities for Caribbean start-ups. This may require special considerations to ensure that after identifying exactly what the Caribbean digital entrepreneurs are working on, find matching corporate partners who have demand for their solutions. One other critical challenge may be the vast diversity of the level of sophistication of Caribbean digital start-ups. This will require a suite of acceleration services with enough scope and scale to meet this diversity.
Do you have previous experience managing European projects? What is the most rewarding thing about it?
With over 20 years of experience managing projects funded by European donors, I find great fulfillment in witnessing the transformative impact of these initiatives on communities and individuals. From enhancing firms’ capacity and expanding market reach to empowering marginalized groups and fostering job creation, seeing the tangible improvements and positive change achieved is immensely gratifying.
To conclude, how would you describe the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator in one sentence?
The EU-LAC Digital Accelerator Programme is a unique vehicle to provide solid growth paths for Caribbean digital entrepreneurs.
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