KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC -Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves left here on Sunday for London before traveling to the West African nations of Nigeria and Ghana.
“I have a couple of meetings in London, and then I go on to Nigeria,” he said at the Argyle International Airport in a video posted to the Facebook page of the Office of the Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves
Gonsalves is expected to arrive in Nigeria on Wednesday and will deliver a lecture on “Technological Emancipation of Africa and the Caribbean in Digital Space and Global Drive for Reparation” at Bells University of Technology of Nigeria’s 15th Convocation ceremony on Friday.
He is scheduled to travel to Accra, Ghana, on Sunday, where he will meet with the Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo.
Gonsalves said that former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo had invited him to visit Nigeria when Obasanjo and President of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), Benedict Oramah, visited St. Vincent and the Grenadines in August.
The prime minister said Obasanjo invited him to Nigeria “to address the emancipation of African technology within the digital space and to speak about the linkage between that issue and reparations.”
Gonsalves said that both of these issues touch and concern sustainable development and sustainable development goals.
“Within that context, I will be doing the discussion. But, importantly, too, I was to talk with the leadership of the Bells University of Technology to have links with our community college as minister responsible for tertiary education,” Gonsalves said.
He said that St. Vincent and the Grenadines have to “develop very sharply, very markedly, science, technology, and innovation beyond what we have created already.
“That is why, for instance, we have been pushing the curricula into those areas, and that’s why I am in quest of building a modern science and technology innovation lab connected to the Community College and linked with the Global Campus of the University of the West Indies.”
Gonsalves said his visit to Nigeria is essential from the standpoint of tertiary education.
“My lecture is, in a sense, part of the whole bundle of matters which carry me there,” he said, adding that he will then have “a concise visit to see the president of Ghana.”
He said he had met Akufo-Addo, who made an official visit to the island in June 2019, at different meetings on many matters.
“And West Africa, of course, is an area which is linked, umbilically to the people of the Caribbean because the enslaved African bodies, those who were stolen, seized and brought as property to the Caribbean as chattel to work on sugar plantations, people predominantly from Africa and throughout the Caribbean, that’s why their lineage is.
“So you have to build on an ongoing basis this particular joinder, particularly in respect of reparation but also solidarity through the Africa, Brazil, Caribbean, Diaspora Commission, which this government has proposed and which has gotten support from the African Union and CARICOM.”
He noted that there is a significant number of Nigerians who came here as students.
“Some of them, their funding arrangements were cut by the Nigerian government, and they are doing good work here, and they are regularising themselves, and we have four Ghanaian students which we gave scholarships. Ghana links with us through the Ministry of Agriculture on cocoa-related matters.
“Again, we have to build all these links, and we share common positions on matters touching and concerning climate change, reform of the financial architecture, the IMF, the World Bank, availability or resources for these former colonies. We met together recently, the G77 in Havana, and there are other engagements we have had since then, and this is just another one, but an important one with two vital countries in West Africa.”
Gonsalves is leading a four-member delegation that includes the island’s High Commissioner to London, Cenio Lewis. The delegation is scheduled to return on November 8.
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