Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM), the CARI­COM Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, and oth­er re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives will join their African coun­ter­parts in Ad­dis Aba­ba, Ethiopia, this week­end for the Sec­ond Africa-CARI­COM Sum­mit.

Con­vened on the third CARI­COM-Africa Day, un­der the theme “Transcon­ti­nen­tal Part­ner­ship in Pur­suit of Repara­to­ry Jus­tice for Africans and Peo­ple of African De­scent through Repa­ra­tions”, the Sum­mit aligns with the prin­ci­ples of the AU-CARI­COM Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) on strength­en­ing en­gage­ment and fos­ter­ing link­ages be­tween CARI­COM and Africa.

The Sum­mit, an­chored at the African Union Com­mis­sion’s Head­quar­ters, is ex­pect­ed to wel­come the pres­i­dents of the World Bank and In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, and Heads of the African and Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Banks, as well as the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank (Afrex­im­bank).

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the broad­er AU and UN sys­tems, along with oth­er strate­gic re­gion­al and glob­al part­ners, in­clud­ing the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of African, Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic States; Per­ma­nent Fo­rum of Peo­ple of African De­scent; civ­il so­ci­ety, and di­as­po­ra or­ga­ni­za­tions, al­so are ex­pect­ed to at­tend.

On Sat­ur­day, the African Union Com­mis­sion will host a high-lev­el side event fo­cus­ing on repa­ra­tions, mem­o­ry and sov­er­eign­ty, and Min­is­ters of Health from the African and Caribbean will con­vene for a joint meet­ing host­ed by the Min­istry of Health of Ethiopia, the African Union Com­mis­sion, CARI­COM, and HeD­PAC.

Caribbean na­tion­als in Ethiopia al­so will host a di­as­po­ra event fo­cused on strength­en­ing Caribbean-Africa re­la­tions.

The open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Sat­ur­day will fea­ture ad­dress­es by the In­com­ing Chair of CARI­COM, Dr. Ter­rance Drew; CARI­COM Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, Dr. Car­la Bar­nett, and the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, An­tónio Guter­res.

Ple­nary ses­sions and a gen­er­al de­bate are among oth­er key fea­tures of the Sum­mit. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)