NASSAU, Bahamas, CMC—The 31-year-old Africa Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) opened its annual meetings here for the first time in the Caribbean on Wednesday, with the Governor of the Central Bank of The Bahamas (CBB), John Rolle, noting the opportunities for Africa and the Caribbean.
“This gathering represents a great opportunity to leverage the shared history, identities, and cultures of African Caribbean nations and to forge stronger trade and investment bonds,” Rolle said as he discussed “Economic Transformation for Global Africa in a Polycrisis World.”
The three-day 31st Afreximbank Annual Meeting (AAM2024) is taking place here alongside the Third AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF2024) through Friday, with both events being fully integrated this year.
Speaking ahead of Thursday’s formal opening ceremony, Rolle said the meetings also present an opportunity to strategize and coordinate a united voice for expressively addressing climate change and accessing resources to fund adaptation.
“The agenda for the next three days is packed with opportunities to learn, share, and network,” he said of the meetings being held under the theme “Owning Our Destiny: Economic Prosperity on the Platform of Global Africa.”
Rolle made reference to an article co-authored by Kristalina Georgieva, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director. In it, Georgieva said that in the past three decades, the forces of trade and integration have contributed to a tripling in the size of the global economy and lifted approximately 1.3 billion people out of extreme poverty.
“However, that same article cautions that the poly-crisis environment in which we’re in is undermining progress, threatening fragmentation and reversal of these gains are some of these gains,” Rolle noted.
“Again, forums such as these annual meetings that encourage innovations and progressive approaches to trade and integration are therefore critical,” Rolle said, adding that the Caribbean has taken note of Afreximbank’s innovative Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS).
He said that with the support of Afreximbank, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) central banks are exploring how to replicate this on a pan-Caribbean level.
“A successful project in the Caribbean could keep us on pace to deliver on targets already being set for an international payment system that, even at the retail level, is more integrated, faster, and significantly cheaper for the average consumer.
“If we are perfect to multilateral cross-border payments and settlement arrangements, it would also help us conserve the use of precious international reserves, especially if we expand intra-regional trade,” the Central Bank Governor said.
Rolle said the Caribbean continues to record healthy economic growth, noting that the IMF’s April 2024 World Economic Outlook said regional economies grew by 8.3 percent last year.
“Although this was a slowing from the 14 percent expansion achieved in 2022, it was still a growth path consistent with the unwinding of momentum which completed our recoveries from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
He described the recovery as “impressive” even if the meteoric gains in Guyana from the discovery of its oil reserves are discounted, adding, “and now growth is trending downwards, approaching its long-run potential for most of our countries.
“Haiti, which is still torn by conflict, is a stark exception that underscores both a regional resolve and an international push to achieve more lasting peace, stability and prosperity in that country,” Rolle said.
A new government was installed in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday as Haiti continues to grapple with the humanitarian and political crisis following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021.
Rolle said that while positive, the average regional growth outlook in the Caribbean still faces significant downside risk, given sustained geopolitical tensions and higher interest rates that central banks have imposed to curb inflation.
“Such developments have tempered global growth projections, and given the increased debt taken on during the pandemic, they further limit the capacities of Caribbean governments to finance the investments needed to bolster resilience and strengthen longer-term growth,” he said.
“Nevertheless, the Afreximbank outreach underscores a potential to increase trade and integration with the African continent and help bolster growth potential,” the Bahamas Central Bank Governor said.
The Afreximbank annual meetings are pitched as a uniquely multifaceted event that cuts across the private and public sectors. They offer unmissable conferencing, deal-making, lobbying, entertainment, and more. This year, they form Global Africa’s Greatest Gathering.
The ACTIF2024 explores the platform of Global Africa, which aims to navigate new vistas for the Caribbean through African and global investments from across the diaspora. More than 25 deals are expected to be signed, and new commercial and developmental initiatives will be announced.
Afreximbank’s Senior Executive Vice President, Denys Denya, said that despite the abolition of transatlantic trade in the 1800s, global Africa remains a peripheral player in the world’s economic and financial spheres.
“In an increasingly de-globalizing world characterized by nearshoring, offshoring with the key actors aiming at economic and political dominance, the need for a United Africa in the context of global Africa is not only logical but indeed urgent,” Denya said.
“I would like to remind us of the hope of our forefathers who fought and lost their lives in the quest for emancipation in the clutches of colonialism and neocolonialism. It has been a long journey.”
He said the global economy today is characterized by the intensification of nationalism and the shift from rules-based multilateral trading systems. He added that the rise of new protectionism, underpinned by trade and technology wars as countries fight for economic dominance, has severely dented multilateralism.
“Unfortunately, these recurring global shocks continue to undermine the development aspirations of most developing nations, especially in Africa.”
Denya said the recurring global shocks and associated liquidity constraints had left African economies at the mercy of creditors, whose lending terms appear designed to ensure that Afreximbank continues “the cycle of borrowing with dire implications for macroeconomic management and social, economic development.
“We must, however, admit that the story of the continent’s development, or lack thereof, is puzzling in the context of natural resource endowment,” he said, noting that Africa is home to over 30% of the world’s mineral reserves and over 13% of the world’s oil.
The Afreximbank senior executive vice president further noted that some African countries control a significant proportion of critical minerals in strategic processes.
“Africa also controls a considerable portion, ranging from 20 to 60 percent, of global production of other minerals, including platinum, natural diamonds, chromite, manganese, phosphate rock, gold, uranium while at the same time, accounting for over 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land.”
He said it is regrettable that, for a continent endowed with such an abundance of natural resources, the quest for sustainable development has been a perennial struggle.
“The state of development across the Caribbean, while not identical, is not quite different from this narrative. In this sustained deprivation and marginalization context, we seek to unify our force in global Africa for a better future,” Denya said.
“In our unity, we have the numbers. We have the voice to sit at the table when decisions are made. Our combined imagination and resources should create a viable force for a competitive edge,” he added.
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