Further indications that the Caribbean is set to significantly strengthen its relations with Africa emerged recently with the announcement that Trinidad and Tobago had dispatched a ‘delegation’ comprising twenty-one private and public sector companies to Ghana on a trade mission. The group, according to a Trinidad Guardian report, has been handed the assignment of “expanding business opportunities beyond the traditional CARICOM /Latin and North American markets.” The development follows what has been, in recent times, unmistakable signs that the Caribbean is ready to ‘change gears’ in terms of the timbre of relations with Africa. Ghana, it seems, has been identified by CARICOM member countries as a ‘staging post’ for the wider initiative.
While it has been Guyana, with its recently acquired oil and gas credentials, that appears to have led the way in the quest to strengthen business and economic ties between West Africa and the Caribbean, the move by Trinidad and Tobago to dispatch a joint public/private sector team to Accra would appear to suggest that CARICOM member countries are on the same ‘page’ insofar as a road map to the region’s planned strengthening of relations with West Africa is concerned. The first ever ‘summit’ designed to strengthen ties between Africa and the Caribbean and to promote enhanced trade relations and investment opportunities between the two regions and which was originally scheduled to take place in 2020 was postponed on account of the COVID 19 pandemic and a virtual ‘encounter’ was staged in September 2021.
Guyana has been at the centre of the wider regional initiative to strengthen business and economic ties with Ghana with visits to Ghana having been made by both President, Irfaan Ali, and Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo. Dating back to 2021, Guyana has played host to a number senior Ghanaian government officials including the country’s President, Nana Akufo-Addo. Representatives of the governments of Trinidad and Tobago and Ghana would have met in the Caribbean recently when the Ghanaian Foreign Affairs Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchway visited the region to attend the CARICOM Heads of Government Conference in Guyana.
The Trinidad and Tobago Trade and Business delegation is being led by the country’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Paula Gopee-Scoon, and the T&T Manufacturers’ Association and the delegation which left Port-of-Spain last Sunday was due to return to the Caribbean on Sunday March 17. The Trinidad and Tobago businesses named as part of the delegation bound for Ghana include the company RAMPS Logistics which provides services to the oil and gas industry in Guyana, ANSA/Carib, Republic Bank, National Energy and African Clothing. Back in June last year, the regional trade and investment promotion agency, Caribbean Export, had reported pleasing results from a visit to Ghana at the head of a team of Caribbean businesses to probe trade and investment possibilities between the West African state and the Caribbean.
