Africa, Caribbean set to remove ‘scars of middle passage’ using ACTIF

BY MADUABUCHI EFEGADI

…vote $700m to establish Caribbean Exim Bank

Africa and the Caribbean, a continent and a region with a historical connection, are set to remove ‘the scars of the middle passage’ marked by the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in which 12 million to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400 years. This time, both regions want to use business to link each other.

At the weekend, business leaders of both regions gathered at Bridgetown, capital of Barbados, for the opening of a first-ever AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF2022) in Bridgetown, Barbados, which marked the dawn of a new vista to tackle the great issues confronting the two regions.

ACTIF2022, which is being held under the theme “One People, One Destiny: Uniting and Reimagining Our Future”, is convened by the government of Barbados and Afreximbank, in collaboration with the African Union Commission, the AfCFTA secretariat, the Africa Business Council, the CARICOM secretariat and the Caribbean Export Development Agency, and co-managed by Invest Barbados and Export Barbados.

Hundreds of business people, entrepreneurs and leaders of development finance institutions in the two regions gathered from across Africa and the Caribbean for the forum.

Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley said at the ACTIF 2022 that Africa and the Caribbean have the collective brainpower, creativity, discipline, resilience and capital to make a defining difference, and called for the creation of air bridges between the regions.

Additionally, the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) plans to collaborate with the governments of the region to set up a Caribbean Exim Bank with an investment of $700 million. The amount would be in addition to an initial $250 million Afreximbank has already made available to support Africa-Caribbean trade and investment.

Over four centuries after the sad era of the slave trade, Africa, the continent from where the millions of young people were shipped, and the Caribbean where freed slaves settled, have managed to run different economies which have a combined GDP of over $3.82 trillion. Africa, the mother continent, with a population of over 1.307 billion (2019), posts a GDP of $3 trillion; while the Caribbean, a region of the continent’s children with 18.9 million people (2021), has a GDP of over $82 billion. The two regions, however, present a different per capita incomes display: Africa at $1,970 and the Caribbean at $4,348.

Prime Minister Mottley emphasised the importance of collaborating at various levels to facilitate development, insisting that political cooperation, even though essential, was not sufficient to reverse the underdevelopment of Africa and the Caribbean.

“We, children of independence, have determined that we shall not allow another generation to pass without bringing together that which should have never been torn asunder. We face common battles from the climate crisis to the COVID pandemic, now to the third aspect of it, with respect to inflation and debt that threaten to tear too many of our countries apart and threaten to put back into poverty too many of our people,” Mottley said.

“These travel dependent economies, whether in Africa or in the Caribbean, have literally been thrown on their backs, and we seek to fight this battle of bridging and reclaiming our Atlantic destiny on both sides, at the very time when the travel and tourism industry is facing its greatest challenge in decades… We can choose to record that as but another major battle, or we can say as my country has done, even in the midst of an IMF programme, that if you do not seize our destiny now, we will never seize it,” she said.

Motley said though it is not anticipated that Africa and the Caribbean can reverse centuries in a few years, it is anticipated that there are some who must claim the courage to jump off the ship and make it happen.

Benedict Oramah, president and chairman of the board of directors of African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), announced the bank’s intention to work with the Caribbean governments to set up a Caribbean Exim Bank with an investment of $700 million. This amount would be in addition to the $250 million the Bank has already made available to support Africa-Caribbean trade and investment.

“We will be pleased to advance our discussions with the Caribbean Development Bank to scale up trade-enabling infrastructure investments in the region, as well as investments in the integration of CARICOM countries in the emerging value chains within geographic Africa, being made possible by the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. We are happy to have begun the implementation of internship programmes whereby Caribbean students pursue attachment programmes in the Bank,” Oramah said.

He hoped that by the time participants leave the ACTIF, the two regions would have forged an unbreakable bond that opens direct links enabling the Caribbean to receive a fair share of tourism receipts from African tourists, for example.

“We would want to leave here with actionable proposals on how to open air and sea links between the Caribbean and Africa. We would like to leave here with concrete plans to open banking and payment rails; to seal joint ventures for industrial projects; to deepen our commercial collaboration in the creative and cultural space, including how to collectively protect our intellectual properties; to share knowledge and jointly invest in climate adaptation projects, and to create institutional arrangements that will enable capacity building and greater daily engagements amongst ourselves, including more Africa-Caribbean inter-marriages so that the links we are rebuilding will be unbreakable,” Oramah said.

Chandrikapersad Santokhi, president of Suriname and chairman of CARICOM, and Albert Muchanga, African Union commissioner for economic development, trade, tourism, industry and minerals, also addressed the forum participants.

Others who addressed the forum include Amadou Hott, minister of economy, planning and international cooperation, Republic of Senegal; Carla Natalie Barnett, secretary general, CARICOM secretariat; and John Williams, chairman, Invest Barbados.