An ex­am­ple of en­tre­pre­neur­ship, the kind this econ­o­my is in des­per­ate need of, is the found­ing and func­tion­ing of the To­ba­go Gold Choco­late Rum Cream com­pa­ny. Like with so many oth­er suc­cess­ful busi­ness cre­ations, the choco­late-rum blend was first ex­per­i­ment­ed with at a do­mes­tic lev­el, in a home be­tween two peo­ple: one ground­ed in the cul­ture of the peo­ple; the oth­er hav­ing a vi­sion to cre­ate a unique prod­uct which could at­tract in­ter­est lo­cal­ly and for those out­side of the cul­ture of To­ba­go and Trinidad.

The out­come is a prod­uct which is on the lo­cal shelves of con­sumer out­lets, and vi­tal­ly im­por­tant, it has been ac­cept­ed in 18 coun­tries and is earn­ing for­eign ex­change for this econ­o­my.

Pro­duc­tion of fin­ished goods and ser­vices for ex­port has been the ma­jor ob­jec­tive of eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment in the post-colo­nial Caribbean. First, the re­quire­ment has been for the emer­gence of man­u­fac­tur­ers, pro­duc­ers and in­no­va­tors of all kinds to be­gin to per­ceive of busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty be­yond that of be­ing lo­cal agents for the prod­ucts of man­u­fac­tur­ers of the metro­pole.

A few have suc­cess­ful­ly done so.

Sec­ond, and per­haps most im­por­tant af­ter tran­si­tion­ing to an al­ter­na­tive to trad­ing the prod­ucts of oth­ers, man­u­fac­tur­er Lars Soder­strom and, very im­por­tant­ly, his helper at home, de­cid­ed up­on adding a flavour of the cul­ture of choco­late to rum to cre­ate a unique blend.

The im­por­tant point here is the use of the lo­cal knowl­edge and prac­tices to man­u­fac­ture some­thing that has cap­tured the taste of both con­nois­seurs and those who just de­light in a good tast­ing choco­late rum. In­no­vat­ing in chal­leng­ing times has been a fea­ture of our cul­ture which has not been suf­fi­cient­ly ploughed for val­ue cre­ations; this time, a blender seems to have got it right.

In the in­stance of the rum-choco­late com­bine, it’s two well-val­ued prod­ucts of our an­ces­tral his­to­ry, brought to­geth­er to be en­joyed at home and per­haps in the West In­di­an di­as­po­ra and the gen­er­a­tion af­ter, who must sure­ly have stored in their mem­o­ry banks and blood­stream, even if for­got­ten in the day-to-day con­scious­ness, the flavours of Trin­ba­go rum and choco­late.

Like in the in­stance of the To­ba­go Choco­late Rum Cream, lo­cal en­tre­pre­neur­ship re­quires deep think­ing and ex­plo­ration of lo­cal ma­te­ri­als and skills which can be com­bined to cre­ate new prod­ucts and ser­vices. Man­u­fac­tur­ers must then have the dar­ing to take their prod­ucts to the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

We have not ful­ly un­der­stood and de­vel­oped up­on the fact that the Caribbean, 500 years ago, was amongst the most de­vel­oped im­port-ex­port pro­duc­ers in the world. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the colo­nial mer­can­tilist trade arrange­ments kept the re­gion on the side­lines. The role that was then as­signed to the colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries was to ex­tract and pro­duce raw ma­te­ri­als to be shipped abroad for re­al val­ue to be added.

Man­u­fac­tur­ers and ser­vice providers of to­day have still not ful­ly cap­i­talised on util­is­ing lo­cal ma­te­ri­als to cre­ate fin­ished prod­ucts which can be sold in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and at good prices.

One oth­er les­son gleaned by Mr Soder­strom is the need, as he has ex­pe­ri­enced it, for in­vest­ment cap­i­tal and gov­ern­ment in­cen­tives to pro­duce the goods and ser­vices which can pen­e­trate for­eign mar­kets. The ob­vi­ous need is for dy­nam­ic en­tre­pre­neur­ship to vary and boost the lo­cal econ­o­my.