With investment-starved countries in the Caribbean and Africa keen to turn the tide and attract a more generous level of foreign investment into the region, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is seeking to shoulder at least some of the responsibility associated with attracting meaningful investment opportunities into those countries.
Caught in the grip of a multiplicity of challenges that include food security, energy, and financial market performance, are the seventy nine (79) member states of the Organization of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States, (OACPS) many of which are currently confronted by major challenges that include food security, energy, and financial market crises. Meanwhile, Caribbean member countries’ efforts at alleviating the challenges include an intra-regional initiative designed specifically to seek to roll back food insecurity, and to promote intra-regional investment.
While most African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries have a dedicated investment promotion agency (IPA), mandated to attract and facilitate inward investments, recent evidence collected by UNIDO and the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA) in the ACP region, indicates that most of the agencies lack the resources to afford high costs of effective global investment attraction activities. Significantly, they also lack the human and technical resources necessary for the creation of an efficient Economic Diplomacy infrastructure. As such, they lack the ‘overseas presence’ to conduct an effective economic diplomacy regimen.
While UNIDO is of the view that the permanent presence in strategic market locations abroad can be a game-changer, attracting and facilitating foreign direct investment (FDI), amplifying the IPAs’ outreach in foreign markets, and generating leads in a cost-efficient and effective way, the structure of the Foreign Service in many of the UNIDO member countries does not accommodate such an arrangement.
Back in January, more than forty (40) diplomats from ACP member countries including Jamaica, The Bahamas, and Barbados, participated in a three-day business diplomacy training, exercise organised by UNIDO and the Secretariat of the OACPS, designed to upgrade the business diplomacy knowledge base of ACP embassies and their technical personnel.
The objective of the programme was to equip the technical staff of the participating diplomatic missions with the knowledge and tools necessary to enable the harnessing the potential of business diplomacy in fostering sustainable investments and economic growth in their respective home countries.
Information released on the event indicated that it sought to enable an understanding of business diplomacy, mastering communication strategies and image skills necessary to engage in business diplomacy, and raising awareness of emerging issues that can influence, including impact investing and supply chain strategies.
Resource persons participating in the seminar included Angela Musgrove, Director on the Board of Caribbean Association of Investment Promotion Agencies.
