Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh

My T&T Guardian col­umn of June 24, 2023, re­flect­ed my dis­ap­point­ment at the then-ad­min­is­tra­tion’s fail­ure to se­cure the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank (Afrex­im­bank) Caribbean of­fice for T&T, which ul­ti­mate­ly went to Bar­ba­dos. I felt as though our coun­try had missed a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Like the late Patrick Man­ning, I, too, dreamed of T&T es­tab­lish­ing it­self as the fi­nan­cial hub of the Caribbean. Port-of-Spain’s wa­ter­front was de­vel­oped with that very vi­sion in mind.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic should have re­mind­ed us how vul­ner­a­ble our sup­ply chains are. To­day, with on­go­ing wars and glob­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty—not to men­tion the Unit­ed States’ un­pre­dictable tar­iff poli­cies—T&T must se­cure eco­nom­ic life­lines to re­main re­silient.

Bar­ba­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, ad­dress­ing the 30th Afrex­im­bank An­nu­al Meet­ing in Ghana in 2023, wise­ly stat­ed, “We can­not be talk­ing about pros­per­i­ty and on­ly pre­pare to look north rather than to look east or west. The on­ly peo­ple who can be blamed for the ab­sence of that con­nec­tiv­i­ty now are no longer those who colonised us but those who are in the seat to­day to make the dif­fer­ence.”

Bar­ba­dos has cer­tain­ly tak­en the lead. Two years ago, the Afrex­im­bank in­vest­ed US$180 mil­lion in its re­gion­al of­fice there and has since sup­port­ed re­gion­al gov­ern­ments and SMEs.

Back in 2023, sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries signed a part­ner­ship agree­ment with Afrex­im­bank to pro­mote and fi­nance South-South trade.

While some lead­ers have fo­cused on re­mov­ing colo­nial stat­ues or re­design­ing coats of arms, oth­ers have tak­en bold steps to con­nect with the Alke­bu­lan (African) con­ti­nent.

That’s why I wel­comed the meet­ing held six days ago be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and in­com­ing Afrex­im­bank pres­i­dent Dr George Elom­bi. A dis­cus­sion on trade, in­vest­ment, and project fi­nanc­ing which came six years too late.

Africa—the Cra­dle of Hu­mankind—is the rich­est con­ti­nent in nat­ur­al re­sources. It holds the world’s largest cobalt re­serves, es­sen­tial for EV bat­ter­ies, along with 40 per cent of glob­al gold and 90 per cent of chromi­um and plat­inum. It al­so boasts vast ura­ni­um and di­a­mond re­serves.

Rus­sia, Chi­na and sev­er­al Arab na­tions are al­ready heav­i­ly in­vest­ed in Africa’s re­source ex­trac­tion. To­day, Chi­na is Africa’s largest trad­ing part­ner, with trade top­ping US$200 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

On Ju­ly 28, 2025, Afrex­im­bank and the gov­ern­ment of Grena­da co-host­ed the 4th Fo­rum (AC­T­IF), bring­ing to­geth­er 1,700 del­e­gates from var­i­ous coun­tries.

Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness praised the ini­tia­tive as “strate­gic ac­tion,” while Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali called it a “trans­for­ma­tive shift.” Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley de­scribed the bank as “a more em­pa­thet­ic, rea­son­able bank” that would help “our peo­ple grow to the next lev­el.”

Afrex­im­bank—a US$40.1 bil­lion in­sti­tu­tion—has pledged US$3 bil­lion to the Caribbean. Grena­da alone has se­cured a US$250 mil­lion state-of-the-art hos­pi­tal. Niger­ian bil­lion­aire Aliko Dan­gote, ranked by Forbes as the wealth­i­est black per­son in the world, has al­so shown in­ter­est in in­vest­ing in Grena­da.

Young Grena­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell has cer­tain­ly shown great fore­sight as a leader. With US visa re­stric­tions and the re­cent im­po­si­tion of en­try bonds, al­though no Caribbean na­tions have yet been im­pact­ed by the let­ter ini­tia­tive, there is now a great po­ten­tial for a tourism and trade in­flux from Africa to the Caribbean.

At AC­T­IF24 in the Ba­hamas, more than 15 deals and MOUs, val­ued at over US$4 bil­lion, were signed.

Thank­ful­ly, our cur­rent Gov­ern­ment is now seek­ing to join the oth­er 60 mem­ber states of Afrex­im­bank—13 of which are al­ready Cari­com na­tions.

This mul­ti­lat­er­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, es­tab­lished in 1993 un­der the African De­vel­op­ment Bank, was cre­at­ed to stim­u­late and di­ver­si­fy African trade.

Caribbean Air­lines may need to strength­en com­mer­cial air link­ages to Africa, while our Gov­ern­ment must con­sid­er eas­ing visa re­stric­tions and en­abling trade in lo­cal cur­ren­cies.

As far back as the 1970s, Ja­maican prime min­is­ter Michael Man­ley cham­pi­oned South-South trade and the New In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Or­der (NIEO), along with Tan­zan­ian pres­i­dent Julius Ny­erere. They ar­gued that the glob­al eco­nom­ic sys­tem was bi­ased against de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, which large­ly ex­port­ed raw ma­te­ri­als with lit­tle added val­ue.

Now, glob­al mar­ket forces are forc­ing us to re­con­sid­er who we trade with and how. It’s time both we and the African con­ti­nent fi­nal­ly eman­ci­pate our­selves from out­dat­ed and un­equal eco­nom­ic re­la­tion­ships.