In the clearest sign yet that Africa and the Caribbean are in a hurry to forge stronger trade and other ties, leaders, business executives, and other delegates from both regions assembled in Grenada for the 4th Annual AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum – ACTIF 2025 this week, determined to make this near investment frontier work for both sides.

Conference officials report that more than 800 delegates from 70 countries are in the city for the three-day conference, which ends on Wednesday. Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said the time was now to do things differently by allowing trade, investment, cultural, and other ties to dominate life between Africa and the Caribbean rather than the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade.

“Once we were connected by ships that tore us apart. Now we must connect by trade routes that bring us together, not to extract, but to invest, not to exploit, but to empower,” Mitchell said, hailing the presence of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), which is providing hundreds of millions in development financing to governments and the regional private sector. “The bank has not just been a financier. It has been and will continue to be a partner in delivering progress, a catalyst for systems change.”

After he and other delegates had spoken at the opening ceremony, bank executives, governments, and private sector officials signed off on hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, including a $250 million portfolio for a world-class tertiary hospital in Grenada and a $100 million disbursement for infrastructural works in The Bahamas, among others.

Outgoing bank president Professor Benedict Oramah announced that the bank has already mobilized over $3 billion to fund several projects in the Caribbean and will help to finance the establishment of a permanent commission to drive trade, investment, and other opportunities between the two regions. “Such a commission should be sovereign, but still supported by Afreximbank, the CARICOM, and the African Union. The Atlantic Ocean once carried our ancestors in chains. As we look ahead, we must now transform it from a grave of memory into a gateway of prosperity. This year’s forum is significant to me personally as it marks the last time I would be addressing you on this platform as president of Afreximbank. What we have done so far is prove the concept; we now need to institutionalize it,” he said.

As an indication of how important this growing collaboration is being seen, regional leaders, including Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica, Prime Minister Terrance Drew of St. Kitts and Nevis, Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre of St. Lucia, and Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua, all flew to Grenada to attend the forum.

Also attending are Kassim Majaliwa, Prime Minister of Tanzania, Prudence Sebahizi, Minister of Trade and Industry, Rwanda, former Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria, and Mahamadou Issoufou, former President of Niger, among others.

Host PM Mitchell also touched on the permanent secretariat to oversee daily contact and implementation efforts, noting that” we welcome and support the creation of a Global Africa Commission. We look forward to our CARICOM citizens visiting many of the African states. We owe it to our young men and women. We recognize that we are in a seminal moment, but that we are not starting from scratch. We are starting from strength.”