An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

There is a grow­ing sen­ti­ment that it is time to re­set and reimag­ine the re­gion’s eco­nom­ic re­la­tion­ship with Africa.

This was re­vealed by Ir­fan Ho­sein, di­rec­tor of in­vest­ment in the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment, dur­ing a pan­el at the an­nu­al Trans-At­lantic Trade and In­vest­ment Sym­po­sium last Thurs­day.

Ho­sein high­light­ed the stark re­al­i­ties of trade im­bal­ance.

He said in 2024, on­ly two African na­tions, Mo­roc­co and Egypt, ranked among the world’s top 50 ex­port­ing coun­tries, and the Caribbean, de­spite its shared his­to­ry and cul­tur­al con­nec­tion with Africa, re­mains large­ly ab­sent from mean­ing­ful trade and in­vest­ment flows with the con­ti­nent.

“We have 13 bi­lat­er­al in­vest­ment treaties. None are with African na­tions. That has to change,” Ho­sein stressed.

Ho­sein high­light­ed that the Caribbean’s trade agree­ments are heav­i­ly con­cen­trat­ed­with North Amer­i­ca, Latin Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, yet Africa, a con­ti­nent of 1.5 bil­lion peo­ple and 60 per cent of the world’s arable land, is vir­tu­al­ly ab­sent from its trade map.

He said the winds may be shift­ing.

Ho­sein in­di­cat­ed that T&T is still the on­ly in­de­pen­dent Caribbean na­tion not to have for­mal­ly signed on­to the African Con­ti­nen­tal Free Trade Area (AFCF­TA).

“We are the last in­de­pen­dent Caribbean coun­try to sign on.  I’m not di­rect­ly cap­i­tal­is­ing on that yet, but when I was in Grena­da, every­one was ask­ing, so what is this one coun­try that hasn’t signed? And it was T&T,” he dis­closed.

Ho­sein out­lined that the eco­nom­ic ra­tio­nale of bet­ter trade re­la­tions with Africa is un­de­ni­able, as the con­ti­nent is home to nine of the 20 fastest-grow­ing economies in the world, ac­cord­ing to 2024 da­ta from the Econ­o­my and De­vel­op­ment for In­ter­na­tion­al Peace.  

He said, more­over, with 60 per cent of its pop­u­la­tion un­der the age of 25, Africa is the world’s youngest and most dy­nam­ic re­gion.

“When you sit with African coun­ter­parts,” one par­tic­i­pant re­marked, “there’s em­pa­thy, a shared past, and a sense of eq­ui­ty. You feel it. It’s dif­fer­ent from oth­er ne­go­ti­a­tions. This emo­tion­al bond could be­come a pow­er­ful as­set if matched with ac­tion. The pri­vate sec­tor, at­ten­dees agreed, must be at the fore­front. Gov­ern­ments can cre­ate frame­works, but busi­ness­es must build the bridges,” Ho­sein stat­ed.

Al­so speak­ing on the pan­el was the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones Au­thor­i­ty (SEZA), Stephen De Gannes, who said that for too long, T&T’s trade strat­e­gy has point­ed in­ex­orably north to­ward the Unit­ed States and Cana­da. He said prox­im­i­ty, ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­tures, and his­tor­i­cal ties have made these mar­kets our de­fault.  

“We are con­strained by ex­ist­ing lines that are al­ways tra­di­tion­al, go­ing straight to North Amer­i­ca.”But what if we al­lowed our­selves a broad­er vi­sion?”

De Gannes high­light­ed that, ex­pand­ing be­yond its tra­di­tion­al routes, this coun­try can de­vel­op prod­ucts that res­onate far be­yond the fa­mil­iar.  

Fur­ther, he said that T&T’s strate­gic po­si­tion and nim­ble size make it an ide­al bridge be­tween con­ti­nents, and the po­ten­tial to serve as a con­nec­tor link­ing Africa, South Amer­i­ca, and North Amer­i­ca could re­de­fine this coun­try’s geopo­lit­i­cal rel­e­vance.  

He not­ed that Brazil’s boom­ing econ­o­my, with its 200 mil­lion+ pop­u­la­tion, is a com­pelling des­ti­na­tion, less than two hours by air, and at the same time, African mar­kets con­tin­ue to grow rapid­ly.  

“By po­si­tion­ing our­selves as a trade hub, we stand to ben­e­fit from in­creased com­merce, cul­tur­al ex­change, and in­vest­ment.”

De Gannes in­di­cat­ed that tech­nol­o­gy, lo­gis­tics in­no­va­tion, and pol­i­cy agili­ty al­ready ex­ist, and what has been lack­ing is a vi­sion that match­es our ca­pa­bil­i­ty.  

He sug­gest­ed that pub­lic-pri­vate col­lab­o­ra­tion can turn con­cep­tu­al ideas in­to vi­able ex­port strate­gies that lever­age ge­o­graph­ic and cul­tur­al ties.

Tack­ling US cur­ren­cy  

The pan­el al­so tack­led bold ideas, most no­tably, whether Africa could launch a gold-backed cryp­tocur­ren­cy to chal­lenge the dom­i­nance of the US dol­lar in glob­al trade. While Aisha Maina, group man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Aquar­i­an Con­sult in Nige­ria wel­comed the con­cept, ex­perts urged cau­tion.

“You don’t break the sys­tem by jump­ing in­to an­oth­er you don’t con­trol,” said one pan­elist. “Glob­al pow­ers still run the in­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture be­hind dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies. We need to build our sys­tems first.”

She point­ed out ini­tia­tives like the Pan-African Pay­ment and Set­tle­ment Sys­tem (PAPSS) al­ready en­abling lo­cal cur­ren­cy trade be­tween African na­tions and its up­com­ing in­te­gra­tion with Caribbean sys­tems as crit­i­cal steps to­ward long-term fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence.

“Africa and the Caribbean don’t just share his­to­ry, they share a fu­ture. But that fu­ture re­quires in­ten­tion­al ac­tion, in­fra­struc­tur­al in­vest­ment, and mu­tu­al re­spect,” Maina said.

Robert Le Hunte, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Serengeti Fi­nan­cial Cap­i­tal Ser­vices, who was part of the au­di­ence, said the PAPSS is a good ini­tia­tive to be looked at as it will elim­i­nate cur­ren­cy risk.

In terms of in­te­gra­tion, Maina out­lined that if this is not first achieved with­in the re­gion, how can one re­al­is­ti­cal­ly ex­pect to fos­ter mean­ing­ful in­te­gra­tion be­yond it?

“Re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion must be the foun­da­tion. With­out cre­at­ing tan­gi­ble in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, re­al busi­ness­es that peo­ple can sup­port and grow, there will be noth­ing sol­id to build up­on. When in­di­vid­u­als in­vest in some­thing, it’s be­cause they feel a sense of own­er­ship and trust. That trust, how­ev­er, can­not ex­ist with­out ed­u­ca­tion and un­der­stand­ing,” Maina de­tailed.

The man­ag­ing di­rec­tor said many on the African con­ti­nent per­ceive the Caribbean as dis­tant, far be­yond its ac­tu­al ge­o­graph­i­cal dis­tance, and it’s not seen as an eight-hour flight away; it feels more like a four-day jour­ney.  

“This per­ceived re­mote­ness makes it dif­fi­cult for po­ten­tial in­vestors in Africa to feel con­fi­dent putting their re­sources in­to Caribbean ven­tures. How can they eval­u­ate or mon­i­tor in­vest­ments in a re­gion that feels so un­fa­mil­iar and dis­con­nect­ed,” she asked.

Maina men­tioned that the Caribbean, in many African minds, ex­ists ei­ther as an ab­stract pol­i­cy point or as a few pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions like Ja­maica and a lim­it­ed view hin­ders wider re­gion­al en­gage­ment.  

Mean­while, she said many in the Caribbean still per­ceive Africa through harm­ful stereo­types, in­clud­ing the idea that it is a con­ti­nent rid­dled with scams.  

She not­ed that such gen­er­al­i­sa­tions, im­ply­ing that two bil­lion peo­ple are un­trust­wor­thy, are not on­ly of­fen­sive but al­so coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

“These mu­tu­al mis­per­cep­tions un­der­score the ur­gent need for re-ed­u­ca­tion on both sides. We must in­vest in un­der­stand­ing one an­oth­er and recom­mit to mean­ing­ful in­te­gra­tion be­tween the Caribbean and Africa. If we do not, we risk con­tin­u­ing this same con­ver­sa­tion ten years from now, dis­cussing on­ly po­ten­tial rather than progress.

“In March, Afro-African in­vestors gath­ered for an in­vest­ment sum­mit fo­cussed on St. Kitts and Nevis, one of the small­est pop­u­la­tions in the re­gion. This choice sent a clear mes­sage: even the small­est among us has some­thing to of­fer, and in­te­gra­tion must start some­where. It’s time to move be­yond rhetoric and to­wards re­al ac­tion,” Maina added.