CITIZENS COMPASS— As part of Connecting Africa, CNN’s Victoria Rubadiri meets companies making deals to expand intra-regional trade. She also sits down with Sanya Alleyne, the Adviser to the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Business Council to get a sense of the current landscape of South-South trade.
At the Afri-Caribbean Investment Summit in Abuja, Nigeria, Rubadiri meets Aisha Maina, the brains behind the summit who believes providing the opportunity to meet face to face is the pathway to creating a tangible trade link. She explains why this is her belief, “When you go to the Caribbean and you go anywhere in the world, they talk about African drums, they have the African dances, but because they’re so far away from Africa, it’s what has been handed down. And I wanted them to see the real thing, what we have […] it has become a flourishing relationship, and that’s why I keep saying that the bridge is built. Because they have connected.” From agriculture to financial services, business leaders have said that no sector should be overlooked if new partnerships are to be formed. Alleyne delves into how this looks for trade with the Caribbean, “The Caribbean has a longstanding history in being able to attract foreign direct investment. And the same goes for the continent of Africa. It is just about being able now to drill down into the weeds of it and being able to flesh out a framework that we can be able to facilitate, create a trade.”
For Alleyne, the next ten years are hoping to hold, “Regular commercial flights between the continent and the region. I think success would be being able to trade in our indigenous currencies to settle payments. And I also believe success would be the ability of our peoples to understand each other, become closer, and see ourselves as one.”
These interviews were featured on the latest episode of Connecting Africa on CNN International.
