The Caribbean Export Development Agency at the recently held 9th African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States (ACP) Summit of Heads of State and Government focused on raising the profile of the Caribbean’s orange economy (also known as the creative economy), exchanging best practices, innovation and cultivating relations.

At the summit held from December 9-10, the regional export entity staged a fashion showcase in collaboration with the ACP Secretariat where 80 designers from 20 countries of the Caribbean, the Pacific and Africa presented under the patronage of Mia Amor Mottley, prime minister of Barbados.

Mottley stressed the importance of initiatives such as this to the promotion and popularisation of creatives in order to raise capital and investment for their businesses.

“We hope that we can create the logistical framework that will allow the trading to take place so that we don’t only marvel at the beauty of the designs, but we can ensure that the economics that will support the sale of the designs can make the businesses sustainable,” she said.

“We now need to popularise it and we now need to ensure that access to working capital is always there for our artists, because for most artists they don’t have the collateral to go and access funding from the banks in order to be able to expand production,” she added.

Caribbean Export Officer in Charge Anthony Bradshaw lauded the initiatives as good participating ventures, critical to the growth and development of his company.

“We have to ensure that the Caribbean is well positioned within the African, Caribbean, and Pacific grouping and that the great contribution the region’s private sector is making towards our economic development is not only recognised and acknowledged, but also supported by legislative frameworks,” he stated.

“The ACP Fashion Show, which was curated by Rodney Powers of the Caribbean Market Centre and Socrates McKinney of DominicanaModa, presented pieces from the Caribbean Fashion Showroom and the collection created during the Agency’s Caribbean Fashion Accelerator Pt 2 programme. One of the highlights of the show was the collection of contemporary shirts from the Dominican Association of Chacabana Producers (ACHADOM) which attracted a lot of interest from the male dignitaries in attendance,” a release outlined.

In addition to the ACP fashion show, Caribbean Export also presented their initiatives supported by the CARIFORUM Directorate and the European Union under the 11th EDF Regional Private Sector Development and Haiti-Dominican Republic Bi-National Programmes within the ACP business village, these included the work of “Manos Dominicanas”, a programme of the Vice-President of the Dominican Republic Margarita Cedeño, supporting the economic empowerment of women through the design, creation and selling of craft products.

“This fashion extravaganza presented a practical example of intra-ACP and ACP-EU collaboration, showing how culture can unite our countries while securing a better future for our people,” the release also stated.