The ground-breaking June 5-15 trade and investment mission to selected African countries by the Caribbean Export Development Agency (Caribbean Export) and the anticipated August 4 launch of the Africa EXIM Bank in Barbados points to an increasingly aggressive regional posture in the matter of upping the level of trade and economic ties with the African continent. Indeed, it appears that the regional business community is beginning to see the pattern of their development-related linkages from a new and decidedly enlightening perspective.
Colonial ties coupled with geo-strategic linkages have historically anchored the region’s trade and commercial interests primarily to the United Kingdom and the United States and it is around those linkages that the economies of the countries of the Caribbean have, to a greater extent, been fashioned. The recent embarkation by Caribbean Export on a trade and economic mission to “selected African markets” that targeted, primarily, Ghana and Nigeria sought, in the diplomatic language used to describe the undertaking, “to deepen cooperation, boost trade and investment, and establish partnerships in the renewable energy, agriculture and AgTech, ICT and Fintech sectors.”
The mission was a signal accomplishment for both Caribbean Export and for the region as a whole. Contextually, what should also be said about the undertaking by Caribbean Export is that it sought to break the cycle of protracted diplomatic indifference on the parts of both the Caribbean and Africa to the substantive strengthening of ties with the continent much beyond the formality of existing formal diplomatic ties. Indeed, it is the historic meagerness of ties between the Caribbean and Africa (little in the way of substantive follow-up had ever been realized out of the exchange visits by CARICOM and African Heads of Government to the region during the 1970’s and 1980’s) that shines a positive light on the recent Caribbean Export undertaking, even without getting to the issue of the takeaways from the undertaking.
Successive visits to Guyana, first, in June 2019 by Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and afterwards, in December 2021 by the country’s Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, were, to a large extent, symbolic of the mutual economic interest of the two countries in the oil and gas industry. The recent Caribbean Export undertaking dug much deeper, the visiting delegation sitting down with their ‘opposite numbers’ in Africa to discuss a business agenda which, it is hoped, will metamorphose into concrete realities sooner rather than later. What the recent Caribbean Export mission has done is to help strengthen the earlier signals from the region that the time is ripe to exploit the historical ties between the two regions through initiatives that can redound to their mutual benefit.
When the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) opened its Thirtieth Annual General Meeting in Africa last month, Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley, in her customary role as the region’s most prominent diplomatic face, was on hand to praise the bank’s payment system “that would allow countries across the continent to trade with each other using their local currencies.” More significantly, eleven CARICOM member countries have now joined Afreximbank while, last month, the Association of CARICOM Central Banks adopted the Afreximbank’s s Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) as their preferred payment infrastructure for a pilot project. At the Afreximbank AGM it was Prime Minister Mottley who placed a Caribbean footprint on the proceedings using her keynote address (titled ‘A New Middle Passage by Africans for Africans: Strengthening Inter-connectivity between Africa and its Diaspora for Shared Prosperity) to underscore the region’s abiding interest in meaningfully strengthening business and economic ties with the continent.
For good measure, the Caribbean delegation at the Afreximbank AGM included Bahamas Prime Minister Phillip Davis and Vincentian Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves. The next step in what is being regarded as a historic measure to link the economic fortunes of the region to concrete business ties with Africa will materialize on August 4 when Afreximbank opens its regional headquarters in Barbados.
