Ger­ard Best

Jer­maine Hen­ry, left, and Jan­ice Mc Leod are two of the cre­ators of Agro Cen­tral, Ja­maica dig­i­tal agri­cul­tur­al clear­ing house.

The good thing about liv­ing in the Caribbean is be­ing part of a Di­as­po­ra of de­vel­op­ing na­tions, in which peo­ple are faced the same is­sues you con­tend with at home. Seen through the right lens, the so-called Third World trans­forms from an en­vi­ron­ment de­fined by lim­i­ta­tion and con­straint, to one in which you're sur­round­ed dai­ly with op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­vel­op mean­ing­ful an­swers to com­plex, deep-root­ed and in­ter-re­lat­ed prob­lems, and you have a glob­al mar­ket for any mar­ketable so­lu­tions that you can de­liv­er!

It's all a mat­ter of per­spec­tive. Some­where in Ja­maica, for ex­am­ple, there's a farmer grow­ing re­al­ly high qual­i­ty pro­duce, but whose as­sured mar­ket is so small that she suf­fers peren­ni­al spoilage. Mean­while, over in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there's an agro-proces­sor who in­sists he could make it big, if he on­ly had a more con­sis­tent qual­i­ty from his sup­pli­er. And up north, in the Ba­hamas, a medi­um-sized restau­rant is on the verge of break­ing through but needs as­sured de­liv­ery of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce.

Now, if some young, bright, en­tre­pre­neur­ial, in­no­v­a­tive minds were to get to­geth­er, sure­ly they could de­sign a sys­tem that al­lowed the farmer to get to mar­ket and find the best of­fers, and al­lowed the busi­ness­men to ac­cess pro­duce at com­pet­i­tive prices. Just ask 23-year-old Jer­maine Hen­ry, one of four thinkers be­hind Agro­Cen­tral, Ja­maica's new dig­i­tal agri­cul­tur­al clear­ing house.

Agro­Cen­tral is a Web and SMS ap­pli­ca­tion that al­lows busi­ness­es to buy di­rect­ly from farm­ers. The app was born in Oc­to­ber 2013 at Start­up Week­end Ja­maica (SW­JA), where­Hen­ry joined up with oth­er 20-some­things Jan­ice Mc Leod and Adri­an Thomp­son to form the team that would even­tu­al­ly claim the top SW­JA prize.

"Since then, we've moved from idea to pro­to­type," Hen­ry said, ex­plain­ing that their agro­cen­tral.co web­site has un­der­gone a cou­ple of re­designs in the process.

"Our plan for year two is to go in­to ex­port. In year three, we plan to move in­to new mar­kets. If it can work here in Ja­maica, we're sure there'll be oth­er farm­ers and busi­ness­es else­where in the world where we can cus­tomise and de­ploy our so­lu­tion."

Agro Cen­tral again emerged tops, win­ning an In­vest­ment Readi­ness award­when the World Bank, its glob­al en­tre­pre­neur­ship pro­gram in­foDev, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) launched the Caribbean Mo­bile In­no­va­tion Pro­gram (CMIP) in Ja­maica on June 10. Agro­Cen­tral won an all ex­pense paid trip to the in­ter­na­tion­al Start­up Fes­ti­val. Two equal run­ners-up from Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica will have par­tial ex­pens­es paid to the event.

"We at Con­nec­ti­mass Foun­da­tion are very hap­py about Agro­cen­tral's progress since win­ning our first Start­up Week­end Ja­maica last Oc­to­ber," said In­grid Ri­ley, founder of Con­nec­ti­mass, who or­gan­ised the in­au­gur­al SW­JA event.

"Since they won, they are be­ing coached by one of our amaz­ing as­signed men­tors Arthur Phidd,a Ja­maican se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur who lives in US­Aand does busi­ness in Ja­maica,Trinidad and Chi­na. He has mar­shalled them through so many process­es in mak­ing them a bet­ter team and start­up.I am not sur­prised that they won the CMIP In­vest­ment Readi­ness award: they are a smart, pas­sion­ate, dri­ven team that's very fo­cused on be­ing a Caribbean start­up suc­cess sto­ry.We are hap­py to be play­ing a rolein their ac­cel­er­a­tion process."

"The en­tre­pre­neurs at to­day's launch, show that many of the prob­lems be­ing solved by our mo­bile apps and IT tal­ent are not just re­gion­al ones, but glob­al as well. That's why col­lab­o­ra­tion is so im­por­tant,"said Ju­lian Robin­son, Ja­maica's min­is­ter of State of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­er­gy and Min­ing.

CMIP is new part­ner­ship to re­cruit and nur­ture the next gen­er­a­tion of tal­ent­ed mo­bile en­tre­pre­neurs in the Caribbean. The pro­gram is a re­gion­al ini­tia­tive ex­e­cut­ed by the UWI Con­sor­tium un­der the En­tre­pre­neur­ship Pro­gram for In­no­va­tion in the Caribbean (EPIC), and fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da.

"In­no­va­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship are key dri­vers for growth. This ini­tia­tive is part of our ef­forts to cre­ate the right eco-sys­tem for young tal­ents in the re­gion to be in­vest­ment ready and start new busi­ness­es that will cre­ate val­ue-added jobs," said World Bank Di­rec­tor for the Caribbean, So­phie Sir­taine.

Left to right: An­gelique­Manel­la, Caribbean Mo­bile In­no­va­tion Pro­gram (CMIP) train­ing con­sul­tant; ToniEliasz, co-lead - Mo­bile In­no­va­tion Pro­gram; David Mullings, co-founder, Key­stone Au­gus­ta Group; An­gela Bekkers, se­nior com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer, in­foDev; Va­lerie D'Cos­ta, pro­gram man­ag­er, in­foDev; Ayan­na Samuels, in­foDev CMIP con­sul­tant; Michael Grant, in­foDev/EPIC com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist; Justin Gutwein, di­rec­tor of doc­u­men­tary Star­tu­p­land.