PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 16: When Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien set about building a cellphone company in the western hemisphere’s poorest country, there was no shortage of skeptics.
Six years later O’Brien’s company Digicel is the largest private investor in Haiti and has 4.8 million users, about half the population. It is a rare beacon of entrepreneurship in a country still struggling to rebuild after the 2010 earthquake.
O’Brien’s ambitious plans for Digicel are part of his bullish vision for Haiti which stands in sharp contrast to the usually gloomy forecasts for a nation crippled by perpetual political turmoil and natural disasters.
Promotion of homegrown entrepreneurship is rare in Haiti, where the government and banks have done little to stimulate investment and a small business elite has traditionally profited from import monopolies that stifle local production.
On a typical whirlwind visit shortly before Christmas, O’Brien, 54, flew into Haiti from New York on his corporate jet for a monthly Digicel board meeting. He then hosted a gala celebrating Digicel’s ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’, a televised event he imported from Ireland to inspire small business.
Six feet tall with white hair and ruddy cheeks, O’Brien is easy to spot among the crowd of mostly local business people and dignitaries, including President Michel Martelly.
“Haiti needs more people like you,” Martelly said. “If it wasn’t for Denis, we’d all be sitting here alone.”
PHONES FOR THE POOR
The Digicel Group is a privately-held company founded by O’Brien in 2001 and headquartered in Jamaica, with 13 million customers in 31 emerging markets, mostly in the Caribbean and Pacific regions.
O’Brien holds 94 per cent of Digicel shares and made Forbes’ billionaires list last year (No. 205) with a net worth of 5 billion dollar. He models himself on Sudanese-born British billionaire Mo Ibrahim, founder of Celtel, an Africa-wide cellphone network, and India-based Sunil Mittal, founder of Bharti Airtel.
Ibrahim sold Celtel in 2005 for 3.4 billion dollar and now runs the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to encourage better governance in Africa, while Mittal also runs his own foundation.
“They proved the concept that you can have people with very little disposable income in real terms, but who want a phone and they’ll pay you for it, and you can afford to build up quite a large network,” O’Brien told Reuters.
Digicel is now looking to enter Myanmar, a country of around 60 million people that has one of the lowest mobile penetration rates in the world, with only 3 percent of the population owning a phone in 2011, according to the World Bank.
Digicel says it had revenue of about 2.5 billion dollar in the year to March 2012, with Haiti leading the way, generating 439 million dollar.
Digicel’s 2006 launch in Haiti was a rare example of foreign investment in a country more used to dependence on foreign aid handouts. Digicel’s shiny headquarters was inaugurated a year before the 2010 quake and was one of the few big buildings to withstand it virtually intact.
Two existing cellphone companies which offered spotty, more expensive services were quickly overtaken as Digicel invested in a national infrastructure and offered handsets for as little as 7 dollar with low rates for its mostly pre-paid customer base.
“Denis revolutionized the communications sector. Before cellphones were a luxury and now they are a must,” said Haiti’s tourism minister, Stephanie Villedrouin.
(AGENCIES)
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