BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, will deliver the feature address at the inaugural Africa-Caribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF2022), next week that the organisers say should attract more than 900 delegates from the Caribbean and Africa.

Chief executive officer of Invest Barbados, Kaye Greenidge, said the September 1 to September 3 event is aimed at fostering the development of strategic partnerships between the business communities in Africa and the Caribbean, to bolster bilateral cooperation and increase engagement.

“We are actually aiming to bring between 500 to 700 African business persons, Heads of State into Barbados. Obviously we know there are lots of spin-offs when you have this massive amount of persons descending upon the island,” Greenidge said.

“We not only, I must say, expecting persons from Africa, we also look for another 200 persons participating in the programme from the Caribbean. We aim to have a lot of business to business meetings where people from here, the Caribbean having conversations with business from Africa in terms of really trying to form those relationships. Our aim at the end of this conference is to have record investment links between the Caribbean and Africa,” Greenidge said of the event that will be held under the theme, ‘One People, One Destiny: Uniting and Re-imagining Our Future’.

ACTIF2022 is being held in collaboration between the Barbados government and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and will also be addressed by Professor Benedict Oramah, president and chairman of the Afreximbank as well as Vera Songwe, the executive secretary of the United Nations Commission for Africa.

The forum organisers said over the last five months, food security, intraregional trade, economic development, trade transportation efficiency, and stronger trade linkages have been largely discussed as matters of great concern to the region with the constraints globally.

The forum is one of many efforts aimed at providing long term solutions to these issues, especially as it relates to trade and investment.

The executive director of the International Trade Centre, Pamela Coke-Hamilton as well as Deodat Maharaj, the executive director of the Caribbean Export Development Agency and Ian Durant, the director of the Economics Department of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) will also address the three day event.