Africa and the Caribbean unite to build a common future.

---

BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS — This past September 1-3, 2022, prominent business, political and cultural leaders from across Africa and the Caribbean gathered in Barbados for the inaugural AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF2022), a meeting initiated by Afreximbank, Export Barbados, and Invest Barbados with the support of the African Union, the AfCFTA Secretariat, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Caribbean Export Development Agency, the Africa Business Council, and the International Trade Centre.

The Pan-African Council joined a number of sponsors supporting the Forum’s central theme: “One People. One Destiny. Uniting and Reimagining Our Future”. The event boasted more than 1500 delegates from 90 countries of the world, including government officials, development partners, trade support institutions, investors and private sector leaders from both regions. On that account, ACTIF2022 aimed to help strengthen relations between the private sectors of the two regions to advance trade and investment.

The Hon. Mia Amor Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, set the tone of the Forum by delivering a gripping keynote address to an enthusiastic crowd highlighting that “Africa has been separated from the Caribbean region, not only by the Atlantic Ocean, but by centuries of few interactions, despite our shared common descent and history. Barbados, at this time, looks to Africa in pursuit of new relationships and partners with the aim of deepening engagement and cooperation with like-minded nations both bilaterally and multilaterally”.

She insisted that although African and Caribbean peoples have worked together for more than a century in the various Pan-African congresses, our political union, though essential were not sufficient “for the journey that must be made to reverse the underdevelopment of Africa and the underdevelopment of the Caribbean”. In the spirit of South-South cooperation – a concept and practice of cooperation and solidarity among regions of the global south historically disadvantaged by the world system – the Forum stressed the importance of deeper economic ties in order to fortify.

Topping the day’s agenda at ACTIF2022 are the business-to-business engagements and panel discussions on several topics, including:

• promoting trade and tourism while improving air links between the regions;
• accelerating industrialisation and manufacturing;
• developing special economic zones (SEZs) and industrial parks;
• improving infrastructure, financing and trade logistics, including regional integration;
• cooperating on health, climate change, and the energy transition;
• fomenting the conditions to accelerate private sector investment; and
• improving food security, agricultural productivity, and expanding agribusiness opportunities.

H.E. Professor Benedict Oramah, Afreximbank President and Chairman of the Board, pointed out that “both regions must forge a common front to harness several opportunities available, including the $27 trillion dollar North American markets”. Simultaneously, Secretary General of CARICOM, Dr. Carla Barnett, highlighted that the potential to do business with Africa was “tremendous” considering that the market represented by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTFA) was set to reach US $6.7 trillion in value by 2035.

Fully capitalising on these prospects will entail clear objectives and targets, namely: mobilising the required resources and capabilities; establishing appropriate frameworks, institutions, and business processes; strengthening and streamlining infrastructure such as air and maritime distribution and transportation channels; mobilising all relevant stakeholders including the vast pool of bi-continental and Diaspora talent; and continuously identifying opportunities and creating awareness.

Accordingly, the strong linkages between Africa and the Caribbean based on a shared history, culture, concerns, and common sense of identity underpin the political and individual will for cooperation to fulfil the promises of the Forum. This natural congruence between the two regions have set a new bar in the battle for a more just and sustainable international social and economic order.

As a first step towards this new era of cooperation, ACTIF2022 will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the most historic events to inspire a new sense of hope, purpose, and dynamism among Caribbean and African peoples.

Africa and the Caribbean join forces in what is poised to be an exceptional and historic event to fortify political and economic ties between the two regions.

---

The AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum 2022 (#ACTIF_2022), slated for Bridgetown, Barbados, from September 1–3, 2022, is designed to build new trade and investment relationships between Africa and the Caribbean. The Pan-African Council is proud to sponsor a platform that will fortify the inextricable link between the two regions; our shared history, identity, and philosophy bind us to a new, positive chapter of bilateral and multilateral cooperation.

Africa’s trade and investment outlook is promising. As the fastest growing continent in the world, the Brookings Institution projects that annual spending by African consumers and businesses will reach US$6.66 trillion by 2030, a 65% increase from 2015 figures. Given the continent’s economic potential, now is the time to increase trade and investment in Africa.

ACTIF 2022 will be held under the theme “One People, One Destiny: Uniting and Reimagining Our Future”. The Forum aims to foster the development of strategic partnerships between the business communities of Africa and the Caribbean, to bolster bilateral cooperation and increase engagement in trade, investment, technology transfer, innovation, tourism, culture, and other sectors.

For more information about the Forum, kindly visit: www.actif2022.com

Uncovering investment opportunities that impact economic participation from the African diaspora.

Osa is a Nigerian-American entrepreneur and impact investor based in Oakland, CA. As a former executive of Growthexpertz and Co-founder of​ ​Black Ice Media​, he has extensive experience scaling and launching venture-backed startups in positions across the C-Suite. This includes developing private portfolios of joint-ventures and launching companies for corporate innovation groups such as +1Labs (Match Group) and BBVA. His primary focuses are on operational efficiency, growth strategy, and systems implementation.

Domestically, he works with private and public entities to co-develop​ ​Blended Capital​ models and research geared towards helping underrepresented entrepreneurs in the US access venture capital investment. Internationally Osa conducts private equity investments in high-growth sectors across Africa through his work with the Africa Equity Group. Osa is dedicated to developing policy and capital models that enable economic empowerment across Africa and regions of the African diaspora.

As Economist-in-Residence (EIR) for PAC, Osa will be embedded at the intersection of the Pan-African Council’s economic investment and policy advocacy initiatives. In this role, the EIR will conduct research on various investment opportunities across Africa and the policies governing them. More specifically, the EIR will explore how these opportunities impact economic participation from the African diaspora.

Research areas include:

• Diaspora economic policy across Africa.
• Equitable and sustainable investment models.
• Innovation and growth in leading sectors across Africa.
• Methods of economic participation for diaspora communities.
• Macroeconomics (political economy, policy, systems, governance, etc).

Research objectives:

• Bridging the diaspora divide by highlighting pro-diaspora policy.
• Bridging the diaspora divide by highlighting opportunities for economic participation
  across Africa.
• Dismantling miseducation through research and publications on diaspora-centric policies.
• Dismantling miseducation through research and publications on impact-driven African
  investment.
• Promoting economic empowerment by proposing models for sustainable diaspora
  investment.
• Promoting economic empowerment by proposing equitable investment models to deploy
  across the African continent.

Choosing between people and profit: it is time to drop the Western exploitative neoliberal model and build a pan-African prosocial collaborative economy.

---

In the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police officers in the United States and the global movement for Black lives, there has been a resounding call to re-examine the relationship between society and state, particularly its use of violence. Yet a meaningful conversation is lacking in relation to one aspect of this failing social contract – the innate structural violence of our current global economic system.

A closer look at African-American history provides us an important lead that could help us start this conversation: the life and work of the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

Born to a maid and stoneworker in 1887, Garvey grew up in an impoverished community in rural Jamaica. In 1905, he migrated to Kingston, the island nation’s capital, where he became involved in trade unionism and political activism after witnessing the struggles of the labouring class.

Drawn to the anti-colonial thinking he encountered by joining the then-National Club of Jamaica, Garvey became an autodidact by nature. His thirst for knowledge would lead him to journey across Central America and live in London from 1912 to 1914 in a quest to understand the global Black condition. He observed parallels between the unfair treatment of African peoples and the discrimination against the Irish in the United Kingdom, and devoted his life to improving the economic conditions of African peoples.

In 1914, he founded the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), with the aim of fostering international unity among peoples of African origin on the premise of economic self-sufficiency. Garvey was a pioneer who epitomised both the enterprising spirit and collective self-determination of African people across the world. The aspirations of his movement, alongside the lessons from its failures and successes, frame an important discussion around the nature of systemic outcomes.

“The Negro is perishing because he has no economic system”

“The Negro is perishing because he has no economic system,” he famously expressed in his 1937 collection of 22 philosophical lessons, which he called the “Course of African Philosophy”.

In this same work, Garvey demonstrates that he understood perfectly well the necessity of designing an economic system that serves the needs of African people globally. Further along, he observed the consequences of systemic economic exclusion and its propensity to reproduce the preconditions that ensure the continuation of systemic deprivation – a cycle he deemed impossible to break without the removal of poverty. In Garvey’s opinion, nationalism hinged on individual advancement alone becomes fundamentally corrupt and unsustainable.

By advocating that “wealth is power, wealth is justice, wealth is real human rights”, he sought to spur community development by promoting a collective decision-making and profit-sharing model that advances the interests of Black people in America and beyond.

In Garvey’s 1921 recorded UNIA speech, “Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement Association”, he asserted the idea that Black communities needed to develop an ideology and an economic modus operandi that would lead to their economic development. He was not speaking of merely duplicating capitalistic ideas, but of the creation of an innovative economic “African commonwealth” where African groups could maximise their collective interests and be recognised as equals. Political and social objectives were secondary to this entrepreneurial mission, as his philosophical works later affirmed that economic achievement is the primary determining factor of societal power dynamics.

Garvey’s teachings invoke a deep reflection – namely, in order to deconstruct the inner workings of an economic system, we ought to first determine what it aims to accomplish.

First principles reasoning around this matter necessarily urges us to question what the primary function of an economy is, and who or what it serves? The word “economy” itself can be traced back to the Greek word oikonomos, meaning “household manager”. In other words, its etymology implies the deliberate management of available resources so that our common household (i.e., people and planet) can not only survive, but prosper.

Economics is our value system codified as equations that determine how much value we assign one thing relative to another. Accordingly, this determines what we are incentivised to do and what we confer power to. If an economy seeks to transform society, it is imperative that we infuse our values into it so that it accounts for our well-being. How a community, country or region chooses to measure its economic well-being shapes how priorities are set and how resources are allocated. We should then agree that at a bare minimum, the components that form an economy’s genetic composition ought to positively encourage human and planetary well-being.

The embedded growth obligation of our present-day market economy generates an untenable paradox: it permeates and commodifies everything by incessantly pursuing profit and constant growth. It requires marketing and advertising to spawn mass zombification in favour of never-ending debt and cyclical consumption. It exterminates economic efficiency and generates copious amounts of waste through planned obsolescence and suboptimal design.

It suppresses the efficiencies and productivity of collaboration by treating ideas and information as proprietary (i.e. intellectual property), resulting in waste through unnecessary intellectual repetition. It preserves a general condition of scarcity and short-term gains premised entirely upon the need for real or assumed deficiency. It deliberately withholds social efficiency by poorly harnessing accelerating technological progress and automation not for the benefit of liberating human beings from drudgery and scarcity, but rather, to drive further economic insecurity through technological unemployment and meaningless jobs.

Quite predictably, all of the above-mentioned circumstances have resulted in a noxious state of planetary imbalance that is fuelling socioeconomic inequality, poverty, exploitation, mental health issues, antisocial behaviours, habitat destruction, pollution, ecocide and biodiversity loss, among other negative externalities.

The market system of economics is made to allocate capital to the most profitable endeavours, not the ones that are most socially beneficial. This is most evident across the innumerable social institutions, banking establishments, political groups, media organisations, scientific bodies, health authorities, military, pharmaceutical and agricultural industries, etc., that have either been seized or compromised by market actors seeking asymmetric advantage.

The inefficiencies created by humans vying for positions of power in this losing game pose an existential threat. Market capitalism has outlived its evolutionary purpose and has degenerated into a malignant cancer.

An economy that is not intrinsically linked to human and environmental needs, while powered by chronic debt and consumerism, is not an economy at all. If anything, it is patently anti-economic.

In Garvey’s time and today, what we have commonly understood to be the economy is, in effect, a fraudulent paradigm masquerading as an axiom of economic value. And Western civilisation has constructed and disseminated a monumental edifice of theory to assert its dominance based on this destructive model of market capitalism.

The basis of this thinking must move African economic development away from a Western-inspired exploitative ethos to an African-inspired collaborative ethos.

Followers of Garvey’s teachings must therefore prioritise dismantling the neoliberal political paradigm at the centre of their economic organising programme for African liberation. They must strive to transcend the market’s crude and reductionist “supply, demand and price” dynamics. Properly embracing the tools of modern technological capacity provides a solution to better interweave, measure and account for the humanitarian values we deem socially desirable in a new economic system.

These elements require deep cooperation in order to outcompete the very concept of competition itself, by creating a prosocial environment where the benefits of generosity, sharing and transparency must outweigh the benefits of non-cooperation at all times – while simultaneously rendering it antifragile in order to endure any exogenous sabotaging forces on this new system.

Rethinking economic development and pan-African solidarity in new terms will require exceptional leadership and tremendous courage. Only by ending economic mismanagement can true efficiency and abundance flourish. The people who are best positioned to transform the world’s destructive systems and structures into something more humane and secure, are particularly those who have been most betrayed by the existing systems. Those who are in the greatest danger of perpetuating old system patterns are the ones who have most profited from them.

From the perspective of historical significance, Garvey proved to be the spark that reignited African dignity through collective endeavour. While he was never afforded the opportunity to fully realise his entrepreneurial aspirations, he provided a blueprint for developing collective entrepreneurial ventures.

His legacy is that of a pragmatic introduction to the promise of pan-African principles and courage – a legacy that must now be carried forward by young innovators across the African continent and her global diaspora.

Now more than ever, humanity needs a century driven by exemplary pan-African leadership that is not fearful of transforming societies and communities into a superorganism of cooperation. All power is weak unless united, let us not shy away from our own divine potential – for no one will save us but us.

This Pan-African Council article first appeared on Al Jazeera and was adapted from Taarifa Rwanda.

The Pan-African Council sent its first delegation to celebrate the Year of Return in Ghana.

---

The delegation, led by PAC Ambassador Hassan Wardere and number of Ambassadors, included high-level talks with ministries, businesses and entrepreneurs, alongside a series of moving visits to Ghanaian schools and the slave dungeons of Cape Coast.

The trip concluded with new media alliances with the CEO of Ghana’s EIB network, Mr. Nat Adisi (aka. “Bola Ray”). The Council believes in connecting our black diaspora and creating its own narrative with strong social, educational, economic and political ties throughout the continent of Africa.

We look forward to a new era of partnerships transforming the narrative on Africa-Diaspora relations and creating avenues of joint prosperity.

Pan-African Council Ambassadors attend the 2018 Presidential South African Investment Conference (@sainvestmentco) to explore investment opportunities in the manufacturing and tourism sectors in South Africa.

---

The gathering brought together South African and international delegates to explore the many investment opportunities in one of Africa’s most diverse and advanced economies as it enters a new era of inclusive and sustainable growth.