RECLAIMING THE ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL OPPORTUNITIES OF THE CONTINENT AND ITS DIASPORA
BY AFREXIMBANK
For decades, the connection between the African continent and the Caribbean has been characterised by a shared experience. The Middle Passage – and the Atlantic slave trade more broadly – brought Africa to the Caribbean. The consequences of colonialism remain starkly present in the ordinary economic lives of Africans – whether in Montserrat or Kenya. The pervading reality is that of two regions characterised by underdevelopment, an international trade system that consistently denies opportunity, and a global investment community that has, in the past, seen these states as sources of wealth extraction rather than prospective investment destinations.
But so much more than shared suffering, the dark experiences of the old Middle Passage unite a diverse and growing family of the African diaspora – together, we possess the capacity to author a new era of shared prosperity and economic independence, which acknowledges but refuses to be defined by what has gone before us.
Afreximbank, a pan-African multilateral institution, was founded by a treaty in the wake of the recession that ravaged Africa in the 1980s, with a mandate to promote intra-African trade and economic independence for a continent too reliant on commodities for growth.
Afreximbank has acted decisively to leverage the symbolic significance of the African Union’s recognition of the diaspora to pursue an all-Africa-driven social and economic development agenda. Already in 2023, the Bank has launched a US$1.5 billion credit facility enabling member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to access Afreximbank’s financing instruments in support of economic sectors as diverse as tourism, healthcare, renewable energy, shipping, mining, agriculture and agribusiness, air links and aquaculture. Beyond mere capital, Africa-Caribbean cooperation should encompass intellectual exchange – an investor in tourism in Barbados, for example, can re-deploy this background in similar projects in Tanzania’s coastal areas, just as infrastructure developers in Egypt can share best-practice with peers in the Bahamas.
Moreover, Afreximbank is actively working with governments of the CARICOM to establish a Caribbean Exim Bank as an Afreximbank subsidiary or affiliate – all while honouring commitments to investing between US$1.5 billion and US$3 billion in the Caribbean, to be disbursed from a regional office opened in the Barbados in August 2023.
These programmes and actions reflect a growing sense, in both Africa and the Caribbean, that the two regions’ challenges are comparable and can be addressed – at least in part – collectively.
An era of closer links between two fraternal regions coincides with a transformative period for intra-African trade, as now underpinned in The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), established in 2018 and launched the following year. The free trade area is the world’s largest by member-state composition, counting within its boundaries 54 signatories and 1.3 billion people, and it will – if carefully implemented and maintained – transform Africa’s economic status quo and reaffirm a sense of continental identity. CARICOM then joins an African community which is pivoting its focus from traditional commercial centres into its own home-grown productive and economic capacity.
Ultimately, Afreximbank’s work with Caribbean states points to a wider possibility, broader than the very real heritage Africans in both places share. The Global South has traditionally looked north for opportunity and investment, but Afreximbank, alongside other institutions, is determined to forge a new dynamic in which the developing world draws upon its own resources and talent to build truly equitable and sustainable societies: at peace with their histories, and optimistic about their futures.
