PRESIDENT, Dr. Irfaan Ali and Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley on Tuesday witnessed the signing of an agreement for the establishment of a partnership between the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).

The partnership agreement, signed by Guyana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Hugh Todd and President of the Bank, Professor Benedict Oramah, aims to facilitate cooperation and support, as well as provision of assistance for the promotion and financing of South-South trade between African countries and CARICOM member-states.

Before the signing of the agreement, a Guyanese delegation led by President Ali and a Barbados delegation led by Prime Minister Mottley met with a team from the bank for discussions on related South-South trade matters, as Barbados had earlier hosted an impressive Afri-Caribbean trade ‘expo’ arranged by the Bank last month.

The September event in Barbados also coincided with the first anniversary of the inaugural CARICOM-African Union (AU) Summit on September 7, 2021 that was hosted Online, and attended by almost all Heads of Government from the continent and the Caribbean region.

The Bank’s ‘expo’ also opened the way for what can well be described as first steps towards a reversing of the Middle Passage of Europe’s Great Triangle during the Transatlantic Slave Trade that saw millions of Africans being kidnapped, exported as insured property, and sold into eternal enslavement.

The routes opened by the Barbados ‘expo’ included a first direct flight to Bridgetown (and the wider CARICOM region) by Ethiopian Airlines, which will surely seek to spread it wings to other destinations, not excluding the Cheddi Jagan International Airport at Timehri, where the related agreement was signed.

The Caribbean’s continuing engagement with Africa since the 2021 CARICOM-AU Summit is a positive and encouraging development that will benefit all CARICOM and AU member-states, and all the peoples of the almost 70 nations involved.

It is, therefore, simply pathetic that while the Guyana Government has, since August 2020, been reaching out and expanding ties with developing nations, big and small, and with regional groups, far and wide, to deepen South-South Cooperation, some would view such developments as right decisions, but taken by the wrong government.

It is also just as absurd to think that in the 21st Century, there would still be human beings measuring governments by racial and ethnic measurements, according to colour of skin and texture of hair, at a time when the UK has just appointed its first Prime Minister of Colour, and Americans two years ago voted the first Woman of Colour as US Vice-President.

Worst of all, though, is that those expressing political displeasure about this PPP/C administration entering into what they regard as potentially-beneficial bilateral arrangements with African nations, they would have preferred to have been the ones signing, are missing the point that this is not a Guyana-Africa deal, but one between a continental bank and a region considered by the AU as Africa’s Sixth Region.

Among those with sour tastes are some who questionably claim to be representatives of People of African Descent, while failing to explain satisfactorily to a concerned public what was done with mountains of related funds provided by an international entity.

This level of shortsightedness continues to blind those who refuse to look beyond their eyelashes to the reality that both times and political climates have changed, and continue to do so in ways that cannot but consign them to the relative scrapheap of history.

But then, grapes aren’t generally sour, so it may just be a matter of taste!