Despite the shared history of Africa and the Caribbean, which spans centuries, and the many similarities of their people and cultures, outside of occasional political gestures, contact between the regions has been quite limited.

This is especially true in the area of trade and investment. A recent report from the Geneva-based International Trade Centre (ITC) described trade between Africa and the Caribbean as limited and concentrated, with less than 0.1 per cent of African exports destined for Caribbean nations, while African countries purchased less than 1 per cent of Caribbean exports. In addition, the trade is undiversified, with 70 per cent of Africa’s exports to the Caribbean being primary minerals, while more than 40 per cent of Caribbean exports to Africa are chemicals, primarily from Trinidad.

The ITC believes that the introduction of free trade agreements between the two regions as well as the reduction of regulatory requirements and transport costs could increase region-to-region trade by US$1 billion. Key barriers have included the absence of direct flights between the regions, the lack of trade and investment agreements, and the overall lack of focus on business opportunities by government officials and others.

It is, therefore, extremely encouraging that Afreximbank, a pan-African multilateral financial institution catalysed in 1993 by the African Development Bank to facilitate the growth and development of intra-African trade through the provision of credit (trade and project finance) and specifically to encourage export development, has now come to the region.

President of the bank Professor Benedict Oramah and his team are here this week to meet with the Jamaican Government. Eleven of the 15 Caricom governments are already part of their agreement, allowing US$1.5 billion to be deployed across the region, and once all have signed Afriexim has promised to deploy US$3 billion across the Caribbean, of which, very unusually for a development bank, they hope 70 per cent to 80 per cent will be loaned to the private sector.

Headquartered in Cairo (its largest shareholder), with regional offices in the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Cameroon, Afrexim has an innovative four-class shareholding structure, with ownership ranging from class A shareholders (African governments, the African Development Bank, African central banks); class B shares (a diverse group of local private investors); class C shares (global financial institutions, such as The Export-Import Bank of China and the UK’s Standard Chartered commercial bank); and class D shares (global depositary receipts available to everyone). Impressively, perhaps as a consequence of this diversified shareholding, Afreximbank is nevertheless rated investment grade by international rating agencies or well above that of its original African sponsor governments.

Its first office in the Caribbean was opened in Barbados in August 2023 at the invitation of Bajan Prime Minister Mia Mottley. The first AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum was held in Barbados in 2022, the second in Guyana in 2023, and the next will be in The Bahamas this year.

Afreximbank offers a wide range of innovative financial products and services, including trade finance facilities; project finance; export development programmes; and advisory services, including sophisticated treasury management, to support African businesses and trade activities that could be easily extended to the Caribbean.

So the hope should be for Afreximbank to extend the positive impact it has had in advancing trade and economic development in Africa, supporting businesses and fostering regional integration with the Caribbean to contribute to our region’s overall prosperity.

It is worth remembering that resource-rich Africa will soon be the world’s most populous continent, and the Caribbean should try to be the logistics hub for its trade with the Americas by taking advantage of both region’s preferences under the African Growth and Opportunity Act.