T&T is seek­ing to in­crease trade and in­vest­ments with Africa as Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon led this coun­try’s del­e­ga­tion at the Sec­ond AfriCaribbean Trade and In­vest­ment Fo­rum which took place in George­town, Guyana, ear­li­er this week.

Or­gan­ised un­der the theme, Cre­at­ing a Shared Pros­per­ous Fu­ture, this year’s event sought to build on the suc­cess­es of the first fo­rum held in Bar­ba­dos in 2022 by fo­cus­ing on con­sol­i­dat­ing com­mer­cial col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Caribbean and Africa.

A state­ment from the Min­istry of Trade ex­plained that par­tic­i­pants in­clud­ed gov­ern­ment lead­ers, mul­ti­lat­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, as well as se­nior pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor play­ers from across 33 African and 13 Caribbean coun­tries. Dis­cus­sions ex­plored a wide range of top­ics in­clud­ing so­lu­tions to over­com­ing fi­nanc­ing con­straints; food se­cu­ri­ty; agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion; en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty; cli­mate change; and trans­porta­tion be­tween Africa and the Caribbean.

The sec­ond fo­rum is a col­lab­o­ra­tion of the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank (Afrex­im­bank) and the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana.

Es­tab­lished in 1993, the Afrex­im­bank is man­dat­ed to fi­nance and pro­mote in­tra-and ex­tra-African trade. In Au­gust 2023, the bank opened its Caribbean branch in Bar­ba­dos.

In the mar­gins of the sec­ond fo­rum, Gopee-Scoon met with ex­ec­u­tives of the Afrex­im­bank on their work in the re­gion and po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion in the fu­ture.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Trade, ex­plorato­ry dis­cus­sions on po­ten­tial trade and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties were al­so held with Dr Amany As­four, pres­i­dent, Africa Busi­ness Coun­cil and with Mr Moataz Elmoka­dem, CEO of Ever­green Egypt Unit­ed; the lat­ter in re­la­tion to fish farm­ing, pro­cess­ing and trade.

In ad­dress­ing the fo­rum, Guyanese Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali, un­der­scored the im­por­tance of the fo­rum in pro­vid­ing a space for both re­gions to dis­cuss so­lu­tions to their chal­lenges.

Ali al­so urged par­tic­i­pants to re­move the “block­ages” to deep­er in­te­gra­tion as he af­firmed that re­gion­al gov­ern­ments stood ready to fa­cil­i­tate.

He al­so chal­lenged the re­gion­al pri­vate sec­tor to “come to­geth­er via a con­sor­tium to un­block the prob­lem of trans­porta­tion es­pe­cial­ly mar­itime trans­porta­tion”.

Bar­ba­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley as well as St Lu­cian Prime Min­is­ter Philip Pierre al­so ad­dressed the fo­rum, not­ing that there were many ben­e­fits to be de­rived from deep­en­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Cen­tre (ITC) and Dr Car­la Na­tal­ie Bar­nett, Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at al­so took part in the dis­cus­sions.

Bar­nett not­ed the lim­it­ed trade be­tween Africa and the Caribbean at just over US$500 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly how­ev­er, was en­cour­aged by sev­er­al ITC stud­ies demon­strat­ing sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial for trade in­clud­ing ser­vices trade be­tween both sides.

The next AfriCaribbean Trade and In­vest­ment Fo­rum is ex­pect­ed to take place on 2024.