The CARICOM-Digicel™ Reparations Top Up
In October 2022, a CARICOM Press Brief announced a collaboration between the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) and Digicel founder and chairman, Denis O’Brien. O’Brien pitched a “Repair” program to CRC officials that pledged support from the Irish telecommunications giant for CARICOM’s “call for Reparations for Native Genocide and Slavery.” O’Brien further modified his own call for reparations by characterizing his proposal as a “‘Marshall-style Plan” modeled after the post-World War II reconstruction of Europe. CRC chairman Sir Hilary Beckles championed O’Brien’s proposal for its “potential to engage in high-level government relations with the UK, Europe, and the European Union.” On the recently launched Repair Campaign website, O’Brien’s team confirms its goal to “amplify Caribbean voices calling for reparations and get former colonial powers to commit to a long-term reparatory fund.” Who, however, stands to benefit from such a reparatory fund packaged in a Marshall Plan for the Caribbean?
IT’S MY DIGICEL (?)
Or, what should Caribbean reparations advocates expect from a partnership with the Digicel Group? Founded in 2001 by the Irish businessman Denis O’Brien, Digicel first established operations in Jamaica at a pivotal moment when telecommunications access and mobile phones gained a foothold in the region. Little more than a half decade earlier, Jamaican dancehall deejay Bounty Killer performed his lyrical ode to the “Cellular Phone” as a luxury item and status symbol. As many Jamaicans “leapfrogged” from scant communications infrastructure to mobile phone service and data connectivity, Digicel and O’Brien stood to profit handsomely.
O’Brien, born in Cork, Ireland, built his business credentials in his home country as the founder of Communicorp Group Ltd. and a member of the telecommunications consortium Esat Telecom. In 1996, Esat successfully claimed the second GSM mobile phone license in Ireland. It was later revealed that Esat Digiphone, the first private sector competitor to the state-owned Telecom Éireann, received the lucrative license after O’Brien delivered illicit payments to Minister of Communications Michael Lowry and his attachés. In 2000, O’Brien sold his share of Esat to BT Ireland, which netted him more than €250 million. With money in his pockets, he turned to new frontiers in the Caribbean.
The Digicel brand quickly embedded itself in the social fabric of Jamaica. Despite being founded and owned by an Irish national, Digicel sponsored local arts, culture, and sport in a fashion that obscured its North Atlantic origins. Advertising campaigns drew heavily on vernacular references and popular music genres. Digicel offered a young Usain Bolt his first corporate sponsorship in 2004, shortly after a seventeen-year-old Bolt set a new World Junior Record of 19.93 seconds in the 200m final at the Carifta Games.
Digicel embraced this model as it expanded and embedded itself into new markets throughout the Caribbean (and later Central America, Oceania, and the Pacific). Over the next decade, Digicel grew synonymous with the mobile phone market in the Caribbean tallying operating profits of US$707 million and gross revenues of US$2.8 billion in the fiscal year ending in March 2015.
DENIS O’BRIEN GOES TO HAITI
Flush from the expansion of Digicel in its first decade of operations, O’Brien rode the wave of another regional market at a moment of unspeakable catastrophe. On 12 January 2010, a 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti, tallying a monstrous death toll in excess of 200,000. Digicel opened for business in Haiti in 2006, enjoying the spoils of mobile phone adoption as rates of ownership spiked from a meager 5% in 2006 to approximately 30% by 2011. After the earthquake, Digicel counted more than 2 million Haitian consumers among its Caribbean customer base.
O’Brien seized upon the opening of the earthquake to further entrench the Digicel presence in Haiti. His US$5 million donation to the Haiti Relief charity earned him plaudits from liberal commentators. Yet, O’Brien did not neglect the opportunity to promote his Digicel products elsewhere. The launch of a “text to donate” campaign — open to Digicel customers elsewhere in the Caribbean — fused the corporate image of Digicel with the cause of disaster relief in Haiti. The principal beneficiaries of the Digicel text to donate program included Haven Community Foundation — a charitable housing organization founded by O’Brien business associate and fellow Corkonian, Leslie Buckley. In 2018, Buckley would step down from his post as chairman of the Irish newspaper conglomerate, Independent News & Media (INM), after a state enquiry into a whistleblower leak of an INM data breach. By 2021, Buckley’s charitable operations in Haiti shuttered as well.
From the rubble of the earthquake, O’Brien emerged not only as the CEO of a lucrative telecommunications outfit but also as a media darling crowned Haiti’s “only hope of salvation.” Filmmaker Patrick Forbes documented O’Brien’s ascent in his documentary From Haiti’s Ashes released in 2011. O’Brien pledged his support to reconstruct the Marché en Fer in Port-au-Prince — an iconic public market frequented by Haitian Madan Sara (market women) and artisans.
O’Brien made good on his pledge; the market reopened on the earthquake’s first anniversary. His philanthropic efforts earned O’Brien a seat in the Clinton Foundation’s inner circle in Haiti. O’Brien continued to bankroll Clinton Foundation projects such as the Marriott Hotel in Pétionville, to which he provided US$48 million as its principal investor. The Digicel founder remained a fixture at ribbon cutting ceremonies for schools, housing schemes, and hotels in and around Port-au-Prince. The Marriott, in particular, was applauded as a post-earthquake driver of economic growth by providing a meeting place for nonprofit managers, businesspeople, and academics (including, in full disclosure, this author as a participant in the 2016 Caribbean Studies Association Annual Meeting).
The vision of “repair” set forward by O’Brien should be abundantly clear in light of the post-earthquake charitable organization scandals and infrastructure projects that followed his philanthropic escapade in Haiti. The relentless protests of the Haitian people against US and UN occupying forces (and top-down development schemes) indicates that the O’Brien model will not permit the masses of Caribbean people to launch their own proposals for self-government.
Rather, the practice of “repair” will be extended only to the elite cadres of private sector financiers, consultants, and scholars. Perhaps more than a top-down model — in which paltry “benefits” purportedly trickle down to the masses — O’Brien’s resembles the “top up” plans familiar to consumers of his Digicel pre-paid phone and data packages. Such top-up schemes suppress the dignity of ordinary people to govern themselves on their own authority — instead carving out elite enclaves and leisure canopies. Anyone who has encountered the many Irish nationals employed as Digicel middle management in the luxury haunts of Port of Spain and New Kingston will understand this model well. The irony of CARICOM governments closing ranks to support an armed intervention of Haiti while partnering with a chief architect of its disintegration should not be lost on any critical observer.
REPARATIONS TOP-UP OR FEDERATION FROM BELOW
What can we conclude from the earnest partnership between the CARICOM Reparations Commission and Digicel’s O’Brien? From his prior reconstruction work in Haiti, we can surmise that his top up approach will protect private capital interests — his own and those of his associates — while offering paltry benefits to the descendants of enslaved people in the former British West Indies.
As advocates of Caribbean federation from below, we call for the integration of regional travel and communications. Freedom of movement and telecommunications access are integral to this model of Caribbean autonomy and self-management. To allow this infrastructure to remain in the hands of a privileged class of billionaire financiers — both foreign and local — is incompatible with any agenda for the reconstruction of Caribbean society.
Down with “Top Up” Reparations!
Up with Caribbean Federation from Below!
