In my lifetime, I’ve visited too many countries to remember. Some I’ve seen for vacation but more often, visits have been for business. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my travels, the more I observe the world, the less I realise I’ve known.

Lagos has always been one of my favourite cities to visit. I love its culture and industriousness. Even more, how similar Nigerians and Jamaicans are; the food we like, how we walk, and especially how we hustle.

Lagos, by far, is always a rich and humbling experience. I recently returned to Jamaica, having spent nearly two weeks there on this trip. On the whole, Nigeria is a fascinating country. As Africa’s largest economy it is blessed with all the essential raw materials a country requires and continues to impact the world with its music, art, fashion, and culture. What’s more, Nigeria ranks 14th as a global oil producer, with roughly 1.6 million barrels of oil output daily.

However, if you’ve been following the news, you would have seen that Nigeria is facing a severe debt service burden amid low revenues. The World Bank estimates it will reach 102 per cent of its revenues this year.

Nigeria’s minister of finance, Zainaab Ahmed, says the Government has appointed consultants as it contemplates restructuring its debt and extending the repayment period of its credit obligation. This is in tandem with their ambitious plan to spend 20.5 trillion nairas next year, 50 per cent of which is not supported by revenue generation.

Additionally, as inflation increased to 20.8 per cent, along with the naira’s dramatic slide, the Nigerian Central Bank announced a redesign of some of its banknotes, intending to force people to change out their money to assist with mopping up liquidity in the marketplace to bring down inflation.

As this vast county of 200 million grapples with its financial dilemma, another dimension of rapid industrial production, manufacturing, construction, and investments are happening in real-time everywhere in Lagos. If this industrial revolution remains on track, I predict that in 10 years Nigeria will not only disrupt international trade with its global competitiveness, but it will become a world beater based on its efficient production capacity. But, more importantly, its trade and commerce will help add value to developing economies with its cost competitiveness.

How can I declare this? Because I have seen up close the state of the art mega manufacturing facilities, oil refineries, fertiliser factory, and private shipping ports owned and operated by Nigerians. Moreover, the companies control their entire logistics capabilities and have built their port facilities for logistics and shipping. As a result, they allow the goods from their factories to leave the production line and be transported directly out the door to barges that sail up the west African coast for consumption or loaded onto larger vessels for export.

MRS Holdings, for example, is a conglomerate of companies that produce four million bottles of engine oil per day to fill 70 terminal containers for export. The firm recently constructed the largest Jetty, a terminal that can berth vessels of 80,000 to 120,000 metric tons, at the Tin Can Island Port in Lagos. The facility is unique in Africa as it can monitor the loading of petroleum down to the last drop with computer technologies. This jetty/port is forecast to save Nigeria US$200 million in annual expenses incurred in ship-to-ship (STS) transfer and demurrage. In another facility I toured, just one machine produced 40,000 plastic one-litre bottles and filled them with lubricant within 60 minutes. The facility runs 24 hours daily.

Furthermore, the Dangote Group, owned and run by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has opened Africa’s largest fertiliser plant in the world in Lagos with the capacity to produce three million metric tons of urea annually, making it the second-largest plant in the world. This investment sits beside Dangote’s new oil refinery.

Real South-South trade

Nigeria’s population is 30 times the size of Caricom (excluding Haiti); however, we have not commercially positioned our trade economy to leverage the benefits effectively. Even though we have talked about South-South trade and co-operation for decades, we have not made it a reality. Twenty years ago, many people used North America and Europe as the standards for global leadership. Today, people no longer hold this isolated view, now that the world’s economic axis shifted to the east with China as the world’s leading manufacturer. However, Africa is rising, with Nigeria at the centre of this development.

In September, the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), Export Barbados (BIDC), and Invest Barbados held the inaugural AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF2022) in Barbados under the theme ‘One People. One Destiny. Uniting and Reimagining Our Future’. The objective of this timely event was to promote and strengthen private-sector relationships between African businesses and Caricom, which will build trade and investment. Among the specific goals were:

(1) promoting inter-bank relationships, including fostering payment and financial flow;

(2) developing creative and cultural engagements that can be commercially viable;

(3) creating a business case for a potential AfriCaribbean Free Trade Area;

(4) promoting trade and investment between Africa and the Caribbean as a platform for market identification;

(5) building business partnerships, exchange of trade and market information and co-investments, facilitate AfriCaribbean investments by fostering cross-regional business and investment linkages;

(6) serving as a platform for disseminating trade and investment information and other products and initiatives of the bank that support trade between Africa and Africans in the diaspora; and

(7) reducing counterpart risk perception among African and Caribbean businesses in dealing with themselves.

In the past, one could argue that the available technology on the continent was not significantly better than our own. This is not the case today. With its current production capacity and manufacturing economies of scale, we should start with Nigeria. Furthermore, Lagos could facilitate direct shipping from its ports, which would be transformative for the movement of goods and services more aligned to the per capita incomes of our countries and the purchasing power of our people.

Peter Tosh reminded us of our roots through his song African. Nearly 50 years later, the relevance of his lyrics is a universal anthem propelling us to do the right thing for each other:

“Don’t care where you come from

As long as you’re a black man, you’re an African

No mind your nationality

You have got the identity of an African…”

This is a pivotal moment in our regional development; our economies and people cannot merely survive, they must prevail. So let us urgently concretise our reciprocal trade partnership with Africa.

Lisa Hanna is Member of Parliament for St Ann South Eastern, People’s National Party spokesperson on foreign affairs and foreign trade, and a former Cabinet member