Entrepreneur Links Diaspora Capital to Caribbean Investment

Jamaican Entrepreneur Jevaughn Smith Leads Push to Unlock Caribbean Diaspora Capital

At just 28, Jamaican entrepreneur Jevaughn Smith is working to tackle a longstanding challenge facing the Caribbean: how to make it easier for people living abroad to invest in credible opportunities back home.

Smith, Founder and Head of Strategy at Caribbean Capital Network (CCN), is helping to build an early-stage FinTech venture exploring how artificial intelligence can connect Caribbean Diaspora capital with credible, regulated investment opportunities across the region.

A graduate of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and former Deputy Head Boy of York Castle High School, Smith also brings experience from the financial services industry. He currently works as a Financial Advisor at Sagicor Life Jamaica’s Corporate Circle Branch.

CCN was established around a simple but significant idea: Caribbean Diaspora investors should be able to invest in the region without having to navigate an unnecessarily complicated process.

For many members of the Diaspora, investing back home can involve challenges around trust, fragmented markets and limited access to reliable investment information. Differences in currencies, regulations, languages and financial systems can further increase the friction.

CCN is being built to help address those barriers by creating a stronger connection between Diaspora investors and credible Caribbean businesses and investment opportunities.

“Our goal is to make it easier for Caribbean Diaspora investors to discover, evaluate and access credible investment opportunities across the region,” Smith explained. “At the same time, we want to help channel more diaspora capital into Caribbean businesses and projects.”

The venture’s initial focus is on the Jamaican, Guyanese and Trinidadian Diaspora, before expanding its reach across the wider Caribbean.
Smith believes that understanding the Diaspora is critical to building a platform that people will actually trust and use. 

As a result, CCN is inviting members of the Caribbean Diaspora to share their experiences, particularly the factors that prevent them from investing back home and what would make them more comfortable using a platform such as CCN.

The initiative is also seeking to engage Caribbean businesses looking for capital, financial institutions, investment professionals and technology partners.

CCN’s development received a significant boost when it was selected by Future Caribbean, a regional technology initiative focused on connecting Caribbean talent, innovation and global opportunity, including through agentic artificial intelligence.

The venture was selected from more than 260 applicants globally and has now entered its building phase. Smith says the six-member team is focused on developing, testing and validating the product with real users.

While the competition’s selection process has already concluded, Smith encouraged people interested in technology and Caribbean innovation to follow Future Caribbean and participate in future opportunities within its wider ecosystem.

For Smith, the motivation behind CCN goes beyond building another financial technology platform. “The Caribbean doesn’t lack capital,” he said. “One of the challenges is connecting that capital with credible opportunities in a way investors can trust.”

That gap, he believes, represents an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the Caribbean and its global Diaspora.

CCN’s broader ambition is therefore to create infrastructure that makes cross-border investment more accessible while helping Caribbean businesses tap into a potentially significant pool of capital.

For Smith and his team, the ultimate goal is ambitious: to build a globally significant Caribbean technology company that demonstrates the region’s ability to develop solutions for its own economic challenges.

At the heart of that vision is a straightforward objective: creating a more efficient and trusted connection between Caribbean Diaspora capital and Caribbean growth.

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