The Africaribbean Trade and In­vest­ment Fo­rum 2025, held last Mon­day and Tues­day in Grena­da, was a fit­ting warm-up act for Eman­ci­pa­tion Day on Fri­day, or in oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, the first Mon­day in Au­gust, which is to­mor­row.

The two re­gions had a thriv­ing trade for more than 400 years—the trade in hu­mans. Slaves, lu­cra­tive car­go of the Mid­dle Pas­sage. Now, Africa and the Caribbean are mak­ing se­ri­ous moves to­wards less painful trade links.

The Cairo-based African Ex­port-Im­port Bank (Afrex­im­bank) and the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da joint­ly staged the fo­rum, which brought to­geth­er more than 2,000 del­e­gates from 80 coun­tries from the Caribbean and Africa. There was al­so a heavy pres­ence from oth­er di­as­po­ra coun­tries, such as the UK.

In town for the con­fer­ence were prime min­is­ters from about half a dozen Cari­com coun­tries. No­table ab­sen­tees were Dr Ir­faan Ali, the leader of the coun­try with the fastest-grow­ing econ­o­my of them all, and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Ali is in the mid­dle of a cam­paign for the gen­er­al elec­tion on Sep­tem­ber 1. More sig­nif­i­cant was the ab­sence of the T&T PM, about which I’ll have more to say in a while.

The fi­nal com­mu­nique said that more than US$300 mil­lion in new deals was gen­er­at­ed over the course of on­ly two days. That’s not count­ing the size of the over­all pledge to the Caribbean—US $3 bil­lion. Pres­i­dent and Chair­man of the Board of Afrex­im­bank, Niger­ian Prof Bene­dict Oramah told the con­fer­ence that US$2.5 bil­lion in deals were al­ready in the pipeline.

Grena­da, the host coun­try, has done well out of Afrex­im­bank. A US$250 mil­lion state-of-the-art, mod­ern hos­pi­tal, aimed at cre­at­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket in high-class med­ical pro­vi­sion. I dis­like the term “med­ical tourism”, but that is its stat­ed aim.

While the Cari­com lead­ers watched, Aliko Dan­gote—the blunt and no-non­sense Niger­ian bil­lion­aire list­ed by Forbes Mag­a­zine as the wealth­i­est Black per­son in the world—an­nounced by tele­con­fer­ence that he was es­tab­lish­ing a re­search and pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment cen­tre in Grena­da to ac­cel­er­ate African and Caribbean in­te­gra­tion. It was the first time that Grena­di­an PM Dick­on Mitchell was hear­ing of it, but he was no less thrilled.

Dan­gote had vis­it­ed Grena­da ear­li­er in the year and had made it clear that Cari­com coun­tries’ visa re­quire­ments for Africans were a hin­drance to the free move­ment in which trade thrives. He ad­vo­cat­ed a stream­lined on­line sys­tem or visa on ar­rival.

“Your main­stay is tourism,” he had told Mitchell in Feb­ru­ary. “If the visa is dif­fi­cult, how do you ex­pect to have peo­ple vis­it­ing your na­tion? The Cari­com econ­o­my can dou­ble be­cause you will see a mas­sive in­flow of peo­ple com­ing.”

In one of the best speech­es of the con­fer­ence, Kanayo Awani, Ex­ec­u­tive Vice-Pres­i­dent for In­tra-African Trade and Ex­port De­vel­op­ment of the bank, had drawn the line of his­to­ry. The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic five years ago helped to bring the re­gions clos­er.

“When fear and un­cer­tain­ty gripped our na­tions, Afrex­im­bank … through a US$2 bil­lion fa­cil­i­ty, sup­port­ed the pro­cure­ment of 400 mil­lion dos­es of vac­cines for African Union mem­ber states and the Caribbean,” Awani said. The oth­er sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor at the time was In­dia. Awani said some­thing shift­ed in Africa.

“It wasn’t just a strate­gic di­rec­tive … it was a call to cor­rect a his­tor­i­cal wrong. Africa and the Caribbean had shared pain, strug­gles, and his­tor­i­cal in­jus­tice—but we have not shared eco­nom­ic des­tiny. That had to change.”

T&T de­served to have its prin­ci­pal in the room, but the PM, we were told, had too many press­ing mat­ters to at­tend to at home to ad­vance her coun­try’s in­ter­ests in a neigh­bour­ing is­land 40 min­utes away. She did in­vite mem­bers of the bank to Port-of-Spain for a pho­to op and brief meet­ing two days lat­er, but sad­ly, the pres­i­dent of the bank was un­able to make it.

It has be­come clear that the barest phys­i­cal de­mands of the job are be­yond the prime min­is­ter (who, nev­er­the­less, re­mains rhetor­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly sharp and in com­mand of her briefs), and it goes far be­yond her ob­vi­ous in­abil­i­ty to un­der­take over­seas trav­el. In my next col­umn, I’ll say why she and her Cab­i­net col­leagues should be start­ing the con­ver­sa­tion about suc­ces­sion.