The fol­low­ing is an of­fi­cial com­mu­niqué is­sued by the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at, con­cern­ing out­comes from this week’s his­toric sum­mit be­tween CARI­COM Heads of Gov­ern­ment and the lead­ers of sev­er­al African coun­tries.

Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) and Africa have com­mit­ted to strength­en col­lab­o­ra­tion and uni­ty and to fos­ter in­creased trade, in­vest­ment and peo­ple-to-peo­ple en­gage­ment be­tween the two re­gions.

The com­mit­ment was giv­en dur­ing the his­toric First CARI­COM-Africa Sum­mit host­ed by Kenya and held vir­tu­al­ly on 7 Sep­tem­ber 2021. His Ex­cel­len­cy Uhu­ru Keny­at­ta, Pres­i­dent of Kenya, Chair of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of African Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic States (OACPS) presided over the Sum­mit which was at­tend­ed by Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment as well as Heads of Re­gion­al In­te­gra­tion Sec­re­tari­ats and In­sti­tu­tions of CARI­COM and Africa.

Speak­ers at the Sum­mit not­ed its his­toric na­ture and that African and Caribbean cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal ties run deep based on a shared his­to­ry, cul­ture, as well as a sense of a com­mon iden­ti­ty.  They cit­ed com­mon his­tor­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ences which in­spired the Pan-African Move­ment cham­pi­oned by the Africans and the di­as­po­ra and which es­tab­lished the foun­da­tions of a rich and vi­brant African-Caribbean re­la­tion­ship. The Lead­ers ex­pressed the view that they were ob­lig­at­ed to build on that vi­sion. It was al­so not­ed that this First Sum­mit was be­ing held dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions’ In­ter­na­tion­al Decade for Peo­ple of African De­scent.

Key ar­eas of pos­si­ble co-op­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion were iden­ti­fied by both par­ties. In his state­ment dur­ing the open­ing ses­sion, Ho­n­ourable Gas­ton Browne, Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and Chair of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of CARI­COM pro­posed that Sep­tem­ber 7th be cel­e­brat­ed as “Africa-CARI­COM Day” with a Sum­mit held an­nu­al­ly on that date. He al­so pro­posed the cre­ation of a Fo­rum of African and Caribbean Ter­ri­to­ries and States (FACTS), the cod­i­fy­ing of a Found­ing Char­ter and a Mem­o­ran­dum of Op­er­a­tion of the Fo­rum, a mul­ti-lat­er­al air ser­vices agree­ment, and an in­vest­ment pro­tec­tion and a dou­ble tax­a­tion agree­ment be­tween African and CARI­COM states.

Pres­i­dent Keny­at­ta, in his state­ment at the Open­ing cit­ed the blue econ­o­my, cli­mate change, health and Covid-19, debt sus­tain­abil­i­ty and tech­nol­o­gy as ar­eas on which the Re­gions could work to­geth­er.

In the dis­cus­sions, the Lead­ers stressed the im­por­tance of ex­ploit­ing the Blue Econ­o­my to boost growth and de­vel­op­ment. They al­so com­mit­ted to fos­ter in­creased trade and in­vest­ment through spe­cif­ic agree­ments and the en­hance­ment of trans­porta­tion links be­tween the two re­gions. This could in­clude the re­moval of the re­quire­ment for visas by na­tion­als of CARI­COM and African na­tions.

The Lead­ers in­di­cat­ed sup­port for the es­tab­lish­ment of a CARI­COM/Africa pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship ded­i­cat­ed to mo­bi­liz­ing re­sources and de­ploy­ing them in crit­i­cal cut­ting-edge projects in­clud­ing re­new­able en­er­gy, the cre­ative in­dus­tries and dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. They called for the es­tab­lish­ment of a joint CARI­COM/AU elec­tron­ic mass me­dia plat­form or mech­a­nism to fa­cil­i­tate the flow of news, in­for­ma­tion and artis­tic pro­gram­ming be­tween CARI­COM and Africa. On the in­sti­tu­tion­al front, they pro­posed the es­tab­lish­ment of an African-Caribbean Fo­rum and the draft­ing of an Africa-Caribbean Char­ter and mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing to un­der­pin the re­la­tion­ship.

The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment ex­pressed con­cern about the mu­ta­tion and spread of the Covid-19 Virus and its ef­fects on the health of the peo­ple as well as on the health in­fra­struc­ture. In that re­gard, they called for in­creased ac­cess to vac­cines and for the build­ing of man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce vac­cines in Africa and CARI­COM en­abled by a waiv­er of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights for Covid-19 vac­cines. The con­tri­bu­tion of the African Med­ical Sup­plies Plat­form (AM­SP) in mak­ing vac­cines avail­able to CARI­COM was laud­ed.

The ex­is­ten­tial threat posed by cli­mate change was ac­knowl­edged and there was agree­ment on the need for the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty to act to­wards cur­tail­ing green­house gas emis­sions in or­der to lim­it glob­al warm­ing to be­low 1.5 de­grees above pre-in­dus­tri­al lev­els. They sup­port­ed a joint ap­proach to the ne­go­ti­a­tions at COP26 to be held in the Unit­ed King­dom in No­vem­ber.

There was strong sup­port for mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism and the strength­en­ing and re­form of mul­ti­lat­er­al in­sti­tu­tions to be­come more in­clu­sive to re­flect the post-colo­nial world. The Lead­ers re­it­er­at­ed their com­mit­ment to the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals. While wel­com­ing the Debt Ser­vice Sus­pen­sion Ini­tia­tive, they em­pha­sised the need for debt re­lief.

They al­so called for an end to the il­le­gal and un­just eco­nom­ic em­bar­go against Cu­ba and to the sanc­tions against Zim­bab­we.

The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment agreed to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in the High Lev­el meet­ing of the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly lat­er this month to com­mem­o­rate the 20th an­niver­sary of the 2001 UN World Con­fer­ence Against Racism, and to joint­ly use that event to ad­vance the claim for repa­ra­tions with­in the process­es of the Unit­ed Na­tions.

The Sum­mit end­ed with a man­date for the in­sti­tu­tion­al­i­sa­tion of co-op­er­a­tion be­tween the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at and the African Union Com­mis­sion.