Editorial | The value of Mahama’s idea

The value of Ghanaian President John Mahama’s proposal for the integration of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) into the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) lies not in its immediate economic prospects. It will take time to develop significant commerce between the two regions.

What is important about the idea, beyond the prospect of trade, is its potential to accelerate the burgeoning political and strategic collaboration between Africa and the Caribbean. The idea of partnership is important in the face of a collapsing international order that exacerbates the vulnerabilities faced by developing countries and given that CARICOM members exist in a region where the dominant power declares its right to direct others on their friendships and whom they can harbour in the neighbourhood.

Mr Mahama, whose August 2-5 visit to Jamaica was bookended by the island’s celebrations of emancipation from slavery and political independence, will next February assume a one-year stint as chairperson of the 55-member African Union (AU). The AU rotates its chairmanship annually among countries from one of Africa’s five continental regions.

However, the AU has formally declared its diaspora Africa’s sixth region. At the same time, it has made a functional and political separation between the 15-member CARICOM and the rest of the diaspora, giving the Caribbean special status and, de facto, making it Africa’s seventh region.

“The Caribbean was accepted and duly acknowledged as the seventh region of Africa,” Mr Mahama noted at a press conference in Kingston. “So it allows CARICOM to sit in AU meetings and to hold discussions affecting Africa and the Caribbean.”

It was in that context that President Mahama publicly unveiled his idea, previously shared with Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness, to use his chairmanship of the AU “to expand the remit of the African free trade area to include the Caribbean”.

In effect, Mr Mahama’s idea would build on the efforts of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), which has in recent years aggressively promoted trade and investment opportunities between Africa and the Caribbean. Indeed, Afreximbank has committed to lending up to US$5 billion to the Caribbean over the next four years.

political opportunities

Effectively, integrating CARICOM into the AfCFTA would open to the region, on a tariff-free basis, a market of around 1.5 billion people with a combined GDP of around US$3 trillion. Presumably, CARICOM would be expected to reciprocate.

However, with a population of around 19 million, CARICOM is unlikely, in the short term, to be flooded with imports from Africa. For either region, less than one per cent of visible exports goes to the other, and trade is concentrated in a narrow range of products.

A 2024 analysis by Afreximbank identified probable trade between Africa and the Caribbean of just over US$1 billion, comprising exports of US$546 million and US$496 million, respectively. It calculated that 57 per cent of the unrealised potential was the result of “trade frictions linked to logistical, procedural and infrastructure challenges”.

These will take time to fix, but the opportunities are there for those willing and ready to undertake the grind. A planned trade mission by the Jamaican Government and domestic firms to Ghana is the kind of stepping stone necessary for a deeper foray into the continent.

But, equally important are the political opportunities inherent in the proposal by Mr Mahama, whose government has recently taken the lead in advancing relations between Africa and its diaspora, especially in the Caribbean. In March, Ghana, joined by several Caribbean countries, sponsored a United Nations resolution that characterised the slave trade and chattel slavery as “the gravest crime against humanity”. Ghana has also joined CARICOM in advancing the cause of reparations for slavery, which saw millions of Africans forcibly removed from the continent and sent mostly to the Americas, including the Caribbean.

greater insulation

This expansion of relations between Africa and the Caribbean is emerging at a time of deepening global uncertainty, driven by the climate crisis, the breakdown of the post-World War II international order, and increasing unilateral action, including the raw exertion of economic and military power by the United States.

In the Americas, US President Donald Trump has asserted the Monroe Doctrine and the United States’ right to dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Washington has also been telling countries in the region that they should disengage from China, which in recent decades has been the primary source of development financing for the Caribbean.

It is not easy for Caribbean countries, either individually or collectively, to resist America’s pressure. Millions of Caribbean people live in the United States, and the region is heavily dependent on the US market for exports, tourism and remittances, which, in Jamaica’s case, account for close to 18 per cent of GDP.

Widening its relations provides the Caribbean with greater insulation. At the same time, CARICOM and Africa, as developing regions, share many interests, which provide a basis for jointly insisting on a seat at the table in shaping a successor to the expiring global order.