15 YEARS TONIGHT: The never-ending future of "The Land of the Mountains"

15 years ago, I wrote a short policy brief on Haiti for a very good friend of mine who was then working as a political advisor for President Michel Martelly, from 2011 until his resignation in 2016. 

After so many years of political turbulence and stop-and-go's of all sorts, the country now faces an electoral process again, hoping to create peace and prosperity for "all the people". 

Times are different now. Stopping gang violence and establishing minimal order are preconditions to everything else, including free and fair elections expected in August 2026. 

However, I still firmly believe that those (somewhat ambitious) ideas crafted in the past can offer some guidance for a future that refuses to come.  

You can check those ideas below:   

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BEYOND RELIEF AND RECOVERY: 10 “next steps” priorities for Haiti

Silverio Zebral Filho (April 2011)

Haiti is back in the news, this time for good reasons. There is “a new sheriff in town,” and there are tons of joy and hope across the street in Port-au-Prince. When it comes to Haiti, “it’s never too late to start right away.” So, let’s move as quickly as possible. 

Responding to a request from a friend working for Martelli’s campaign and, as expected, for the new Administration, here are 10 straightforward ideas for Haiti’s next steps: 

1. Re-establish confidence. The elected government received a strong political mandate from the Haitian people: almost 70% of Haitians who participated in the electoral process chose “change”. For this reason, the most important immediate task for the government is to lay out its own priorities, establish its own agenda, make specific demands for stakeholders to collaborate around this agenda, and communicate it to Haitian citizens (using a widespread e-government open solution based on radio signals and cell phones). The government should speak with “one voice” to build trust and make it easier for NGOs, international donors, and potential foreign investors to do their work. The recently elected president, Michel Martelly, should set up a series of working round-trips to Washington, D.C. (World Bank, IADB, OAS, and USAID), New York City (investors and business community), Mexico City, Paris (European and French potential investors), Brasilia (Brazilian government officials), and Sao Paulo (Brazilian business community) to connect with national leaders abroad and communicate his plans to move forward with relief, recovery, and reconstruction of the country.

2. Gain “ownership” and control over international aid allocation and the decision-making process. Only 60% of the promised spending for 2010 (a total of around US$10 billion over the next decade) was disbursed, with funds mismanaged and dispersed. The reasons are several: lack of confidence; a general perception that corruption and red tape remain high (even when considering only relief and recovery funds); and fraught competition among multilateral agencies and their implementing partners. Furthermore, NGOs on the ground have limited funding and a shortage of continuous funding for “start-up” projects. It is also important to note that most of the funds for the country’s reconstruction efforts have been allocated without taking into account the Government’s own priorities, despite the significant efforts by IHRC to register projects and initiatives led by NGOs on the ground. In light of these facts, it’s essential to establish a centralized decision-making process for HRF funds to allocate them strategically, taking into consideration the Government’s own priorities (certainly, this process should contemplate the participation of donors and IOs, but it should be emphasized that the final decision on fund allocation should be the responsibility of the recently elected government). This centralized agency should be directly linked to the Presidency and staffed with the highest-level technicians available, who would receive advice from international experts (for instance, on management and technology catch-up). This agency will oversee the overall coordination of international aid and long-term national development strategies (a sort of “Technical Secretariat of the National Presidency,” as the one in El Salvador). As a recent study from McKinsey Global Institute highlighted: “The government should be able to ask for help from international institutions while retaining national sovereignty.” 

3. Create a development agency focused on long-term economic and social development through mid-term productive transformation. The country must create structures that will allow it to shift its focus from immediate relief and recovery to mid-term and long-term development. IHR needs to be replaced with a technical development agency responsible for advising the President on economic and development decisions related to fund allocation, fiscal incentives, and major economic and organizational issues for productive transformation. A small group of 5-7 highly qualified development professionals should be recruited to advise senior Haitian public officials on designing, implementing, and empowering the HAITI DEVELOPMENT AGENCY (HAD). For instance, technical cooperation and recruitment could be explored by experts and retired professionals from the Brazilian Development Bank. 

4. Establish a national dialogue forum to design and approve a national development strategy. Currently, Haiti’s social and economic national goals have not been taken into account by the international donor community in the allocation of relief resources, partly because there is no minimum agreement among political, economic, and social leaders. One of the first tasks of the new “legitimized” government is to open a broad national dialogue – this could be done with the technical support of the forthcoming Haiti Development Agency (HDI) with collaborative support of IOs such as the OAS and the IADB to elaborate (in no later than 6 months, staring now) a NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT VISION 2012-2032 and a NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN 2012-2016. Far from being a “political show” or an exercise of collective wishful thinking, the objective is to set a manageable and narrow (as much as possible) set of national goals/targets that aim to improve the social conditions and economic performance of each region of the country, with participation of civil society and brain-drained Diaspora. These targets need to be translated into concrete projects/initiatives to be implemented under public-private alliance schemes and should be linked to Multiannual National Budget programming for the same period (in this case, 2012-2016).

5. Identify the people and register the property. Elsewhere in the world, the “state capacity” to implement public policies came from a well-known tripod: basic infrastructure, private property rights, and taxation. The reconstruction of basic infrastructure (national airport, hospital, and schools) is the main short-term goal for the new government. But no effective public policy or social protection initiative can be implemented or delivered without a well-established system for registering citizens. Also, there cannot be an effective urban-rural development policy without an adequate cadaster serving as the main reference for resolving land property conflicts and/or as financial collateral. In the case of Haiti, since the earthquake affected the civil registry archives in a significant manner and many identification cards were lost, it is imperative to start a NATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR CIVIL AND LAND PROPERTY REGISTRY 2012-2013 (designed as a sort of “Census” survey), followed by a clearing and updating of the land property registry. This initiative should be implemented just after debris removal and the demolition of unsound structures. Technical support from the European Union and the OAS is strongly recommended, given their expertise and prior experience in the country. 

6. Mapping physical, human, and social capital. Elsewhere in the world, the “state capacity” to plan and foster socio-economic development rested on a well-known tripod: time, money (i.e., budget/fiscal resources), and information. The implementation of an effective, productive transformation policy requires adequate geographic information about infrastructure, people, and natural resources over the territory. Without this information, the decision-making process about how, where, and when to build a hospital, open a road, or build schools becomes a dice game: nobody knows the pay-off. A nationwide Geographic Information System, in the form of a Haitian Geographic Information Center, could be implemented to organize satellite imagery and validated ground-based geo-data (in addition to this, it’s also very useful for reconstruction purposes). That is relatively easier to do in a small island country (such as Haiti), and technical support could be obtained from the IADB and the OAS once similar experiences are running in Bolivia and El Salvador.

No country can reach the relevant development levels without prior capital accumulation. Capital accumulation is a mandatory precondition for securing sustainable funding for the government’s temporary incentives and for supporting start-up business initiatives that would create wealth and jobs once they are consolidated. This will indeed take time, but it’s a first step toward accumulating foreign reserves to help finance a basic social protection net and services. The following list presents a narrow set of concrete, mutually reinforcing initiatives for attracting FDI that could be considered by the elected President: 

7. Haiti as primer Logistic / Export Hub for the Americas: You don’t need to buy a world map and a compass to find that Haiti is located in the middle of the Americas. This strategic location makes Haiti an ideal country for an Air Carrier Global Hub and a Duty-Free Export Processing Zone. Tax exemptions and appropriate fiscal incentives could be discussed with major world-class carriers (FEDEX, UPS, TWT, and others) and companies interested in exporting manufactured products to the US and Canada to create a competitive advantage based on relatively low labor costs and a potential trilingual workforce. 

8. Haiti as a new tourist destination in the Caribbean: revitalizing and expanding its once robust tourist industry is one of the key initiatives to be fostered by the new Government. The process should start by attracting 3 ANCHOR-BEACH RESORTS to be located on the North, South, and West outskirts of the main Haitian cities. Obviously, the security threats in those areas must be solved first. Safe, brand-new roads should be built to connect these anchor resorts and the PAP airport (previously revitalized to serve as an air carrier hub, as mentioned), and the jobs created should be assigned to Haitian nationals. The experience of Papagayo Gulf on the West Coast of Costa Rica (and its Liberia Airport) should be studied in detail. An INTERNATIONAL MEDIA / MARKETING CAMPAIGN to change international perception about Haiti and promote the country as an alternative destination for adventure / ecological/cultural tourism should be implemented to target tourism, especially from Europe, the US, and Brazil. The experience of the Colombian campaign, “Colombia is passion,” could be an interesting source of inspiration for similar initiatives in Haiti. 

 9. Haiti as a “producer” of ethanol for the US: the main agribusiness alternative for Haiti’s productive transformation is one that links tropical climate, low-complexity agriculture, clean energy industry, and preferential trade agreements with the US (and, let’s say, France): PLANTATION AND PROCESSING OF SUGARCANE ETHANOL on the island. The green-field projects should consider potential technical cooperation with Brazil, preferential treatment for Caribbean-based exports in the US, and the use of ethanol as a substitute for petrochemical-based plastics (e.g., PET bottles for soda, kitchen bags, and so on). 

10. “Made in Haiti” productive transformation strategy: Every small, underdeveloped country should concentrate its productive transformation efforts, given its limited funding, on a “product space” formed by no more than 3 MAJOR EXPORT PRODUCTS whose Haitian origins are recognized as “one of the best in the world” (as Brazil once did with coffee, Chile once did with copper, and Argentina once did with meat, to mention just a few Latin American countries that made that kind of transition, climbing the ladder to more complex industries). These products should be the object of special fiscal/tax treatment and vertical “industrial” policies to foster entrepreneurial initiatives within the “tripod model” (government, domestic capital, and foreign capital). The Government of Haiti should concentrate its efforts on BUSINESS / COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY to attract international firms with state-of-the-art expertise in processing those products and to negotiate technology transfer agreements as collateral conditions for fiscal/tax special treatment. 

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