GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC) — The Caribbean Community (Caricom) Secretary General Dr Carla Barnett says there has been progress in trade and investment between Africa and the 15-member regional integration grouping following the commitment given by the leaders during their first Caricom-Africa summit in 2021.

In a virtual address to the annual Global Africa People-to-People Forum 2023 held over the last weekend, Barnett described the inaugural summit in 2001 as a “landmark occasion” allowing both regions to engage on matters of mutual interest and determine the direction for deeper cooperation.

She said the summit was held against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which vaccine hoarding by high-income countries “threatened our ability to effectively curtail the effects of the virus on our public health system”.

But she told the forum, which was held under the theme ‘Building on visionary initiatives: Reflections of the inaugural Caricom-Africa Summit’, that “today, we are particularly proud of the collaboration between Rwanda and two Caricom member states — Barbados and Guyana — on a pharmaceutical production programme to help ensure adequate supplies of critical pharmaceuticals for both our regions”.

Barnett said at the first summit Africa and Caricom also examined matters such as trade and investment promotion, development finance, climate change, mass media, and forging increased people-to-people contact.

“Caricom and Africa have made progress in trade and investment relations, with strong support from Afreximbank. A formal partnership has been established, and the Caribbean headquarters is scheduled to be opened in Barbados in a few weeks’ time,” Barnett said.

She said this will allow Caricom countries to access financing for trade promotion in a range of sectors.

“The possibility of utilising the pan-African payment and settlement system as a method of intra-regional payments within the Caribbean is also being explored,” she said, adding that as a a follow-up to the summit’s discussions on strengthening trade and investment. “We welcomed last year’s First Africa-Caribbean Trade and Investment Forum, convened in Barbados under the theme ‘One People. One Destiny. Uniting and Reimagining Our Future’.

Barnett said the region is looking forward to the second forum to be held in Guyana in October this year under the theme ‘Creating A Shared Prosperous Future’.

She reminded that the 2021 summit mandated a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Caricom and the African Union Secretariat to allow for ongoing technical dialogue.

“We expect that signing ceremony to take place in short order, setting the foundation for other commitments to be pursued,” she said, noting that president of Rwanda Paul Kagame had attended the recently held Caricom summit in Trinidad and Tobago as a special guest.

Barnett said the cooperation between the two regions in the international sphere also remains robust.

“Caricom continues to collaborate with African states in the context of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States; the Commonwealth; and the United Nations. In the past we strongly supported and were present in the anti-apartheid struggle with African states to establish a Permanent Memorial at the UN for Victims of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Barnett said diplomatic representation to cement relations between States has increased, as several Caricom member states have now established diplomatic representation in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, and South Africa.