AS Africa Day 2026 is observed Monday, May 25, former Prime Minister P J Patterson is calling for stronger partnerships between Africa and the Caribbean, signalling that the time has come for people of African descent to move beyond symbolic ties and build united systems that promote prosperity, environmental protection, and a stronger global voice for African and Caribbean people.

He made the call in a message from the P J Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy at The University of the West Indies, the full text of which appears below:

The advent of Africa Day 2026 compels all individuals of common African-derived heritage and ethnicity to honour the struggle and resilience of our ancestors and to renew our synergies for total liberation and long-overdue prosperity.

As an indispensable element of Agenda 2063, the African Union has chosen to focus this year on water availability and sanitation systems. That choice will redound across the entire continent, but particularly from Sudan to the Sahel, as essential to life itself and a prerequisite to sustainable development. It will also resonate throughout our Caribbean. Our agenda for growth and development must be people-centred, climate-conscious, and inclusive, particularly in rural and congested urban communities.

In an era of climate change, severe droughts, excessive floodings, environmental degradation, and inadequate infrastructure, our focus must be to reduce water insecurity and public health vulnerabilities across the six regions of Africa.

The P J Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy (INAFRICARA) underscores the urgency of collective action and investments in sustainable systems that protect our people and the environment. The struggle for equitable access to our natural resources and promoting environmental sustainability is inextricably intertwined with the search to ensure that every child, family, and community of Global Africa enjoys constant access to safe water, sanitation, and a healthy environment.

We cannot deny that Africa Day 2026 occurs at a period of extraordinary turbulence and frightful uncertainties in the annals of our universe. Among the few certitudes is that the African continent looms as pivotal to the emerging global configuration with 54 nation states, unmatched mineral wealth, vast expanse of arable land, and increasing levels of young population.

The time has come to forge our own destiny by the collective exercise and force of equal sovereignty. At the INAFRICARA, we contend that the relationship between the Caribbean and the African continent must move decisively from sentiment to structure for repeated declarations of kinship will not suffice. What is required now is the architecture of partnership — trade agreements that honour our complementary strengths; educational exchanges that replenish the intellectual capital of both regions; as well as investment frameworks that ensure African and Caribbean capital works effectively in the service of African and Caribbean peoples.

We must speak with united voices at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the multilateral institutions at which the rules of the global order are written — too often without us, and too frequently against us.

Twenty-fifth May will come and go, but it must not take with it or dissipate the resolve of Global Africa to design an international order in which we have a commanding voice; our interests are safeguarded; where we can build with our creative minds and capable hands, common heritage with shared prosperity, rooted in sovereignty, innovation and cultural confidence.

Let us celebrate on this day the artists and athletes, the scholars and scientists, the farmers and factory workers, the mothers and the activists — all those who carry Africa’s civilisational flame in their daily lives without fanfare or footnote.