The Caribbean may be falling short in terms of its trade po­ten­tial in the African mar­ket, but Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es are lead­ing the charge to­wards chang­ing that re­al­i­ty.

A re­cent re­port launched by the In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Cen­tre (ITC) and the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank (Afrex­im­bank) stat­ed that an­nu­al trade in goods and ser­vices be­tween Africa and the Caribbean could reach up to $1.65 bil­lion by 2030, ex­clud­ing min­er­al fu­els.

How­ev­er, that re­port found that de­spite deep his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al links, trade be­tween the two re­gions is on­ly a small share of each re­gion’s over­all trade, de­spite com­ple­men­tar­i­ties across sec­tors rang­ing from agribusi­ness and man­u­fac­tur­ing to ser­vices and the cre­ative econ­o­my.

ITC Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Pamela Coke-Hamil­ton, in launch­ing the re­port, said: “At a time of ma­jor shifts in glob­al trade, coun­tries need to strength­en re­gion­al ties and in­vest in val­ue ad­di­tion to build re­silience. We know the ma­jor trade op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween Africa and the Caribbean – and now we can fo­cus on help­ing busi­ness­es take ad­van­tage of those op­por­tu­ni­ties through bet­ter mar­ket in­tel­li­gence, im­proved lo­gis­tics and greater ac­cess to fi­nance.”

The re­port stat­ed that 80 per cent of Africa’s an­nu­al goods ex­port po­ten­tial to the Caribbean re­mains un­tapped.

The re­port ex­plained that Caribbean ex­port po­ten­tial lies in the ser­vices sec­tor, reach­ing US$481 mil­lion. The re­port iden­ti­fied busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties across sev­er­al pri­or­i­ty sec­tors, in­clud­ing processed food and an­i­mal feed, chem­i­cals, min­er­als and met­als, ap­par­el and tex­tiles, leather and footwear, tourism, trans­port ser­vices and cre­ative in­dus­tries.

T&T is the re­gion’s largest ex­porter to Africa, but on­ly around US$21 mil­lion of this po­ten­tial is un­re­alised, ac­cord­ing to the ITC re­port, with T&T’s to­tal ex­port po­ten­tial to Africa pro­ject­ed to hit US$407 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly by 2030.

The re­port stat­ed fur­ther that with­in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), T&T ac­count­ed for 35 per cent of all Caribbean mer­chan­dise ex­ports to Africa, sec­ond on­ly to The Ba­hamas (whose trade is heav­i­ly dom­i­nat­ed by ves­sel re-ex­ports and en­er­gy tran­sit).

The ITC stat­ed T&T has the low­est pro­por­tion of un­re­alised ex­port po­ten­tial rel­a­tive to its to­tal mar­ket ca­pac­i­ty in the Caribbean—hav­ing con­vert­ed rough­ly 95 per cent of its ad­dress­able mar­ket po­ten­tial in­to ac­tive com­mer­cial flows through an es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al pres­ence in en­er­gy, petro­chem­i­cals, and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

How­ev­er, there is con­tin­ued be­lief among many promi­nent busi­ness own­ers and stake­hold­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go that even more ex­pan­sion can be achieved in Africa.

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj stat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter be­ing sworn in in 2025 that Africa is “one of the biggest mar­kets we have to ex­plore.” At the open­ing of the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion in Ju­ly, he again high­light­ed the po­ten­tial of the African mar­ket, not­ing Ghana could serve as a strate­gic gate­way for T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers to reach the 420 mil­lion con­sumers in the Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty of West African States (ECOW­AS).

Ma­haraj had been push­ing for a di­rect flight be­tween T&T and Ghana to fur­ther bol­ster the con­nec­tion.

The ITC re­port said high trans­port costs, lim­it­ed di­rect ship­ping links, reg­u­la­to­ry bar­ri­ers, lim­it­ed ac­cess to fi­nance and dif­fi­cul­ties in iden­ti­fy­ing trust­ed com­mer­cial part­ners were among the bar­ri­ers to greater trade re­la­tions.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian called the Trade Min­is­ter on Fri­day to get his views on the re­port, but he said he was in a meet­ing and could not share a com­ment.

When asked about the re­port on Fri­day, econ­o­mist and for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne sim­i­lar­ly felt there were more links to be made.

“The an­swer to that is yes. The moral of the sto­ry is that you look at Africa. Africa is as close as Latin Amer­i­ca. So it’s re­al­ly a ques­tion of the trans­porta­tion links that, in a sense, di­vide us in terms of how we get there,” he said, not­ing that de­spite these chal­lenges, there were paths still be­ing ex­plored.

Browne point­ed out that while many im­me­di­ate­ly think of con­nec­tions in West­ern Africa, lo­cal com­pa­ny SM Jaleel had made head­way in South Africa.

“There have been trad­ing links. It’s a move­ment of peo­ple be­tween Nige­ria, Ghana, and the Caribbean, so we have bet­ter links with those coun­tries than we have with many oth­ers. But in a sense, all of Africa is tapable.”

Browne al­so agreed with the sen­ti­ment that cul­tur­al sim­i­lar­i­ties could help forge that con­nec­tion but point­ed to the cur­rent ob­sta­cles which had al­so been ac­knowl­edged in the re­port.

“It’s a ques­tion of in what ar­eas, what sim­i­lar­i­ties, what can we do, and trade re­al­ly is about two things. Re­al­ly, at the end of the day, peo­ple have to go, peo­ple have to see the op­por­tu­ni­ties, and then de­cide to take the risk. And it’s about de­vel­op­ing the re­la­tion­ships,” he said.

He did not be­lieve the gap was in­sur­mount­able, as T&T had al­ready shown the ca­pac­i­ty to de­vel­op a ma­jor trade re­la­tion­ship with Chi­na.

“Con­sid­er, for ex­am­ple, Chi­na is on the oth­er side of the world to us, but we have trad­ing re­la­tion­ships with Chi­na. So same is­sue with what you all did. We are at the stage where we have to en­gage the world. Sim­ple as that,” he said.

On Thurs­day night, dur­ing an ac­cep­tance speech at the Caribbean Best Man­aged Com­pa­nies 2026 Gala Awards, host­ed by De­loitte at the S Ho­tel in Kingston, Ja­maica, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Ramps Lo­gis­tics Shaun Ram­per­sad not­ed the com­pa­ny had ex­pand­ed in­to the South­east­ern African coun­try Mozam­bique and en­cour­aged oth­er Caribbean busi­ness­es to es­tab­lish such con­nec­tions.

"West Africa, in par­tic­u­lar, is a very im­por­tant mar­ket for us in the Caribbean. There are so many cul­tur­al and oth­er sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween our peo­ples, and I think just the same way we've al­ways looked at Guyana and Suri­name, Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos, I think that there will be a lot more com­pa­nies from the Caribbean that are hope­ful­ly look­ing at Ghana and Nige­ria, Mozam­bique and dif­fer­ent places," said Ram­per­sad.

Ear­li­er this year, Michael Sealey, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Nu Wave Au­to­mo­tive, spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian about the de­vel­op­ment of CATEMA, a com­pa­ny which was formed just for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of get­ting prod­ucts from Trinidad man­u­fac­tur­ers across to Ghana and oth­er coun­tries in West Africa.

That seed had been plant­ed af­ter Sealey was part of a trade mis­sion or­gan­ised by the TTMA in March 2024.

At the launch of the re­port, Denys Denya, se­nior ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent at Afrex­im­bank, said, ”Africa and the Caribbean must trans­form a shared his­to­ry in­to shared pros­per­i­ty. With our Cari­com of­fice in Bar­ba­dos, about US$1 bil­lion in ap­proved trans­ac­tions and a US$5 bil­lion re­gion­al fi­nanc­ing com­mit­ment, Afrex­im­bank is ad­vanc­ing this vi­sion through fi­nanc­ing, de­posit mo­bil­i­sa­tion un­der CEN­DEP, busi­ness links through the an­nu­al Afri-Caribbean Trade and In­vest­ment Fo­rum, lo­cal-cur­ren­cy pay­ments through CAPSS and cre­ative-in­dus­try col­lab­o­ra­tion through CANEX.

"This re­port of­fers a prac­ti­cal roadmap to turn un­tapped po­ten­tial in­to bank­able op­por­tu­ni­ties across agribusi­ness, man­u­fac­tur­ing, tourism and the cre­ative econ­o­my. Through tar­get­ed fi­nanc­ing, stronger trans­port and lo­gis­tics links and strate­gic part­ner­ships, we can build a Glob­al Africa con­nect­ed by her­itage, trade, in­vest­ment and shared op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

The re­port called for tar­get­ed ac­tion to im­prove mar­ket in­tel­li­gence and busi­ness match­mak­ing; ex­pand ac­cess to trade fi­nance and pay­ment so­lu­tions; strength­en trans­port and lo­gis­tics con­nec­tiv­i­ty; sup­port sec­tor-spe­cif­ic val­ue chain de­vel­op­ment; im­prove reg­u­la­to­ry co­op­er­a­tion and mar­ket ac­cess; and fos­ter stronger part­ner­ships among busi­ness sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tions.