Africa ‘should collaborate with Caribbean’ on development and trade
Barbados PM urges African leaders at the Africa Investment Forum in Morocco to work together to reduce finance costs for developing nations
At a conference in Marrakech this week, Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados urged African leaders to collaborate more effectively to bring down the cost of finance for developing countries. In a discussion with Samia Suluhu Hassan, President of Tanzania, Julius Maada Bio, President of Sierra Leone, and Edouard Ngirente, the Prime Minister of Rwanda, at the Africa Investment Forum, Mottley said, “We face the common difficulties of the Global South not being able to access capital at rates that make investments palatable. The cost of capital is simply too high.”
Mottley’s comments echoed a persistent theme among speakers at the conference of the need for greater cooperation between developing countries. Emphasizing the historical ties between the Caribbean and Africa, she suggested the Caribbean could be a sixth region of the African Union, giving African nations increased access to trade with the Americas and beyond.
“Working together in substantive ways to be able to expand markets for each other, through expanded connectivity, will create the platform that will give us the financial and economic capacity to become more resilient,” she added.
