By: Kimberly Ramkhalawan
September 2, 2022
Calls for airbridge to happen between two regions
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley is questioning no direct air travel linkages between Africa and the Caribbean have been established.
Her question posed even as she welcomed guests to her country for the African Caribbean Trade and Investment forum, which she remarked coincides with one day after the UN declared August 31 day of the International day for People of African Descent, Mottley described it as a timely occasion celebrating the coming together of its people with the diaspora.
For its people to come across to the Caribbean, an Ethiopian Airlines direct flight was chartered from Lagos, Nigeria to Bridgetown. But with the both regions looking to do business together, there needs to be direct transport to facilitate trade. To this the Barbados PM in analyzing the situation says “it can only be a mindset that has prevented a plane from travelling 2000 kilometres less from Bridgetown and Dakar and opting to go from Bridgetown to London, and a 28 hour delay in New York”. She says “it is done in spite of the fact that ordinary citizens do not have the luxury of presenting as diplomats for official VISAS where those exist, not to our countries, because all have been removed, but the only way to get here is through North America and Europe, then how will you get the transit VISAS to get people here if we don’t build the bridge across the Atlantic through air bridges”.
Mottley says she has spoken to enough people in the last three years to know this is an act of political will and individual will. She says going where no one has gone before is not easy.
Referring the recent visit of singer ‘Burna Boy’ to her shores for their crop over festival, and a concert that drew some 20,000 people where he commands the same in the region as he does at home and Barbados’ Rihanna doing the same, how can we say do not have the appetite to travel to each other’s countries.
If we don’t deal with these things, then we will perpetuate another generation as simply being someone else’s pond and the faces that I see in this room today do not reflect that desire at all.
Mottley says “while it should not be anticipated that we can reverse centuries in a few years, it should be anticipated that there is some who must claim the courage to jump off the ship and make it happen, to run this race and to run it with passion and to bring along those who might make the journey easier”.
Giving her word, she said if “they have to create legs, across North Africa, East Africa and the Caribbean to make the flights viable, and if we have to create the direct logistic links between our ports of entry so that we can export directly and not go north to come back down south to make our products competitive, then let us make those bonds and those relationships that can unlock that to remove one in five, one in three, one in two, one in ten from a life of poverty.”
She thanked her CARICOM partners for their willingness to sign with the Afreximbank in what she says will “literally unlock the potential for far more funding from the continent of Africa that has been made available to us as a region for many other endowed regions of the world”.
In reference to the US$700M seeded into the cooperation, Mottley described it has having been born not only of the sentiment that is natural for families that have reunited but born from the hardcore reality that we must make money from our own development and not others.
And in the gesture of an invitation and proposal, Mottley announced that the Afreximbank will be afforded the same immunities and privileges as the Caribbean Development Bank once it decides to set up offices. “You said you want marriages this morning and honestly as a modern 21st century woman, I now propose to you marriage to you between Barbados and the AfrEXIM BANK”. The move resulted in an uproar of laughter and much applause from those gathered at the opening ceremony.
She applauded the establishment of Republic Bank, a Trinidad and Tobago bank in Ghana, and in the same breath welcomed African banks into the region even as she mentioned the shrinking of Canadian banking facilities in the region, despite long lasting relations for decades and close to a century of operations in the Caribbean.
Mottley invited those present to get to truly know each other if these marriages were to work and last in time, and described “the ability to have a Caribbean Export Import bank with its partners in the African Export and import bank is too critical possibility in the region and for unlocking the benefits of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy to ignore at this stage”.
In the spirit of a marriage, she said “we have the collective brain power, the collective creativity, the innate discipline and resilience and above all else, the capital between Africa and the Caribbean to make that defining difference now. We have begun to understand that when we know each other, business becomes that much easier”.
She urged those gathered to “leave Bridgetown with those concrete relationships and those of you who have capacity and not yet inclination, if we in this period of our lives, not our children can make real that have only been the dreams and aspirations of hundreds of millions of people, then the confidence that was placed in us to take responsibility for our future, to forge it in a way that sees people, hears people and feels people in a way that were not seen, heard or felt for centuries, then we would have done our part on this relay journey. We came on the same ship, but we are one race, one people, and that we must now forge a common intention”.