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Kudzanai Sharara recently in Bridgetown, Barbados
The AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum 2022 (ACTIF2022) successfully concluded in Bridgetown, Barbados, on Saturday, with a commitment by participants to remove the ‘scars’ of the past and build a commercial bridge towards forging a prosperous future for Africa and the Caribbean.
There are no direct flights between the Caribbean region and Africa. To travel between the two continents, passengers or cargo have to go through Europe or the Americas. As a result there is very little commercial activity between the two continents.
And yet these are two continents with strong historical ties. Most in the Caribbeans are descendants of slaves, traded mostly from Africa. Connecting with Africa is thus like connecting with their roots and heritage.
As the theme of the forum suggested, Africans and Caribbeans are “one people” and can have “one destiny” if they can unite and reimagine their future.
At the meeting commitments were made, among others, to establish a subsidiary of the Afreximbank, which saw a US$750 million kitty being put in place. Direct flights are also being planned, possibly starting with charter flights.
In the communique presented at the end of the forum, the partners pledged the concrete implementation of strategic partnership between the business communities in Africa and the Caribbean with the objective of fostering bilateral cooperation and engagement in trade, investment, technology transfer, innovation, transport, tourism, culture and other services.
Afreximbank signed a partnership agreement with seven Caribbean states. The agreement is meant to usher in investments to concretise the commercial relations between the two regions, with an immediate focus on establishing an air bridge , and business to business match-making through the newly established African-Caribbean Business Council.
The partners stressed the critical importance of enhancing investment and trade for economic and social transformation in line with the Forum’s theme of “One People, One Destiny: Uniting and Reimagining our Future”,
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said that key goals had been achieved through ACTIF2022, adding, “What matters is not so much the subject area, but the attitude and approach, one for collaboration and two for de-risking, that we come now to today’s moment to be able to deal with. And that is the importance of today’s inaugural AfriCaribben Trade and Investment Forum because it allows us to see how we can work together to unlock those very difficult issues that have only been made worse, regrettably by matters beyond our control.”
Online Reporter