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"Reinventing the Triangle"


Emancipation Trade and Investment Seminar
Attracts Key Public-Private Participants

Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, 1st August 2001 – The Emancipation Support Committee (ESC) of Trinidad and Tobago and the United States-based Foundation for Democracy in Africa (FDA) presented the two-day Trans-Atlantic Expo 2001 International Trade and Investment Symposium on 30-31 July that attracted key participants from the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the World Bank, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery, the staff of United States Congress, the Port of Miami-Dade (Florida), the Caribbean Association of Industry & Commerce, as well as other members of the business community and civil society from the Caribbean and the United States to discuss the creation of a U.S.-Africa-Caribbean trade triangle for the 21st century.

Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister, Basdeo Panday, who spoke at Emancipation Day celebrations, was so impressed with the theme and content of the program in 2001 that he promised to include a representative nominated by the ESC to all his country's delegations to future Africa-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) and Group of 77 meetings .The Prime Minister said the Emancipation Day theme, "Mobilizing Global African Resources: The Middle Passage Redefined," echoes several sections of the Havana Declaration, resulting from last April's South Summit. That document encourages cooperation between African, Caribbean and Latin American countries and recognizes regional cooperation as the "most meaningful approach for the south to face the challenges of globalization and take full advantage of its opportunities."

ESC is the traditional coordinator of the annual Emancipation in the Caribbean celebration, which commemorates the end of slavery in the Caribbean region in 1838. An estimated 10,000 persons took part in the commemorative procession on the morning of Emancipation Day and joined crowds that eventually totaled more than 15,000.

"For centuries, development was not on the agenda for Africans enslaved in the Americas. It took until August 1st 1838 for Africans in the English-speaking Caribbean to triumph over chattel slavery. One hundred and sixty-three years later, we are revisiting the experience of our foreparents, learning from the millennia of civilization, which were represented in those chained bodies, reinventing the triangle that symbolized the beginning of their nightmare as they crossed the Atlantic, transforming a route of tears to one of trade with a human face, giving emancipation a meaning relevant to the 21st century," said Khafra Kambon, Chairman of ESC. "In mobilizing global African resources, we are making our dispersal a resource for our development. We are making the strength and resilience of our culture a resource for our development. We are making our historical consciousness a resource for our development. We know we have to be up and running in this century. Africans either have a bright future or no future. We have chosen a bright future."

FDA is a non-profit organization providing programs in Africa on economic development, democracy and health issues. The two organizations formed a partnership to pursue the trade triangle in late 2000. Triangular trade was the theme of FDA's fourth annual AfrICANDO Trade and Investment Symposium in Miami, Florida, in the U.S. on 2-5 May. The Port of Miami signed a sister seaport agreement with the Port of Lagos, and a sister airport agreement was signed between Miami International Airport and Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos at the recent AfrICANDO symposium. FDA currently is working with Miami-Dade County, which manages the seaport and airport, and the Nigerian Government to actualize those agreements through technical committees including the Government of Nigeria and the Miami-Dade Government.

Her Excellency Nne Furo Kurubo, High Commissioner for Nigeria in Trinidad and Tobago, opened the symposium by describing the challenges facing the effort to construct the trade triangle in the new global economy, but she emphasized that such a system of trade relationships was "an idea whose time has come."

Pointing to the trade agreement signed between Nigeria and Trinidad and Tobago last year, High Commissioner Kurubo said, "It is the road we must take, and the time is now."

She urged the nations interested in establishing the new trade triangle to create stable, peaceful governance. "Just as no one can sell in a market full of anarchy, economic development cannot be fostered in economic and social instability," the High Commissioner explained.

Ms. Edwina Leacock, Permanent Secretary of the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Enterprise Development and Foreign Affairs, told the participants that there is a new spirit of Pan Africanism that can take advantage of the acceleration of entrepreneurship and trade interest in Caribbean countries such as Trinidad and Tobago and countries in Africa. She pointed out what she described as a "reverse flow in human capital" in the form of the dispersion of Caribbean and Africa technocrats around the world.

The Permanent Secretary said developing trade conduits, such as the one being built between the Port of Miami and the Port of Lagos, Nigeria, could in the short run provide a gateway to Africa for the Caribbean.

Speakers on the three panels made the following observations:

Global Institutions and Business in the 21st Century Economy

William Maloney, a Senior Economist in the Latin American-Caribbean division at the World Bank, said his institution advises countries not to ignore their traditional strengths when making economic strategies for the global economy. He said that the nations of the Caribbean have a rich resource base, an educated work force and proximity to the United States, the region's largest economy. Maloney advised Caribbean nations that to remain competitive in world trade, they need to access the global information network because the Internet is now intensely involved even in non-telecommunications sectors such has food production, pharmaceuticals, forest and paper products.

Henry Gill, Communications Director of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery, said the Caribbean nations are small countries that are among the most reliant on trade in the world. He said their small size makes them economically vulnerable due to the narrow range of goods and services they offer, so that problems in one or two sectors can severely damage Caribbean economies. According to Gill, international trade is the main motor of the global economy, which now defines trade to include such areas as services, intellectual property and government procurement.

Ralph Henry, an economist who is Director of Kairi Consultants Limited, said the U.S.- Africa-Caribbean trade triangle has been in existence since the days of the Italian explorer Columbus, but that the same countries have dominated profits from triangular trade since that time. Henry said that in order to create a new paradigm, in which the descendants of Africans become significant economic actors in a reimaged trade triangle, Caribbean nations must simultaneously give entrepreneurs more freedom and support. In dealing with the global economy, he said Caribbean and African nations should follow the example of the mythical African trickster Anansi the spider, who would agree to the established process but still work toward his own interests.

U.S.-Africa-Caribbean Trade Mechanisms: AGOA and CBI

Gregory Simpkins, Vice President of the FDA, told participants that the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) represented a growing consensus within the U.S. Government that increased trade was in the mutual interest of America and the nations on the continent. He described the features of AGOA, which include encouraged reforms to increase the investment attractiveness of African economies, sources of project funding, enhanced duty-free access to the U.S. consumer market and the October 4-5 U.S.-Africa trade and investment ministerial. Simpkins also explained that the passage of AGOA was largely due to the input of the African diplomatic corps in Washington, which became fully energized on behalf of AGOA and worked with its American advocates to promote its passage.
Beverly Falby, Senior Foreign Policy analyst for U.S. Congressman Alcee Hastings, recalled for participants that the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), as originally proposed by then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1982, was intended to be a comprehensive program to promote investment in the Caribbean. She said many amendments since 1982 have minimized the legislation's overall economic impact. Falby strongly urged Caribbean business people to express their needs in Washington, especially the U.S. congress.

Fay Housty, Director of External Economic Relations for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), said her organization had thought in the early 1980's that CBI would be a negotiated item and not a piece of legislation unilaterally provided as a concession. Housty told participants that CBI previously allowed preferential treatment for Caribbean products that were not among the region's primary exports, but that parity extended under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) allowed some equalization of treatment between Caribbean goods and those from the three NAFTA partners (the United States, Canada and Mexico). AGOA and CBI are parallel measures, she explained, but they include provisions that prevent the two processes from being used in concert to promote African-Caribbean trade.

Operationalizing Trade and Investment in the Triangle: Telecommunications, Finance and Shipping

Khalid Salahuddin, Deputy Port Director of the Port of Miami-Dade, compared Miami-Dade County's current interest in African trade with the interest in Latin American and Caribbean trade over the last 25 years, which now represents 40% of shipping through the Port of Miami-Dade. He said increased competition among Caribbean ports for existing trade means some ports are suffering, citing Freeport, Bahamas' success at the expense of Kingston, Jamaica. According to Salahuddin, current shipments to Miami from Africa take up to 48days, which prevents the transport of perishable goods and limits U.S.-Africa-Caribbean trade at this point in time.

Filippo Alario, Senior Manager for Trade Finance at the Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago Group, explained his bank's expanded trade services, designed in response to a University of Chicago study indicating that exporters want more assistance from trade financing institutions in today's global economy. He said traditional trade finance has evolved into trade banking, in which bank still develop financing instruments, but now include such services as trade promotion, advisory services, electronic trade services, training for businesses in a variety of fields and in-house consultants for businesses clients. Alario said his bank recently launched a new product called "export cover," in which a private company insures receivables, while the bank provides up-front financing.

Felipe Noguera, Chief Executive Officer of the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce, said Caribbean countries are not yet ready for telecommunications competition because of cost and limited bandwidth . He said the risk-averse character of Caribbean government leaders and their lack of knowledge of telecom's possibilities is limiting their countries' participation in such areas as distance learning and electronic commerce. Examining the other two legs of the proposed trade triangle, Noguera said telecommunications technology in Africa exists in advance of regulatory development policy, which the United states is a telecommunications leader, with one of the world's most developed regulatory systems for this sector.

In concluding remarks, Melvin Foote, President of the Constituency for Africa, said the reinventing of the U.S.-Africa-Caribbean trade triangle was timely and important. One of the reasons for its importance, he said, was that for development to take place, it requires relationships to be built across the Diaspora, a process of which he saw the seminar being a part. He said such a trade plan must not ignore the critical issues, such as the impact of HIV-AIDS, conflict resolution and poverty alleviation.

Recommendations

The day-and-a-half trade discussions produced the following recommendations:

1. Businesspeople in Africa and the Caribbean must determine how trade mechanisms such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act and the Caribbean Basin Initiative can be accessed, but future such agreement should be negotiated with the governments involved.

2. Given the influence of the American economy and the presence in Washington, D.C., of entities such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank, there must be more effective input in the American capital from the public and private sectors in the Caribbean on their trade and economic needs to match the increased input currently coming from Africa and Latin America.

3. All the trade relationships in the proposed U.S.-Africa-Caribbean trade triangle must be made effective, not just those involving the U.S. and Africa or the U.S. and the Caribbean.

4. Women entrepreneurs must be enabled to play a meaningful role in international commerce.

5. A cost-effective and time-efficient transportation infrastructure must be developed by air and by sea that will enable the movement of people and goods between the U.S., Africa and the Caribbean, utilizing Miami as the initial link between Africa and the Caribbean.

6. African and Caribbean countries must establish both infrastructure and regulatory systems to advance telecommunications in both regions.

7. American, African and Caribbean businesspeople should meet regularly to discuss trade issues and establish functioning trade networks in all three regions, taking advantage of existing relevant trade conferences such as the annual AFRICANDO and Emancipation in the Caribbean events.
8. Civil society in the U.S., Africa and the Caribbean, working on trade issues, must recommend policies on trade issues that adequately reflect the aspirations and social needs of people in all three regions.

9. Finance agencies providing funding for U.S.-Africa-Caribbean trade must offer versatile services and be responsive to the needs of business customers in all three regions.

The participants decided to begin an ongoing collaboration in pursuit of triangular trade through two projects. The first would involve the encouragement of a lobby mechanism in Washington to express the needs of the Caribbean public and private sectors within the U.S. Government and the international financial institutions in the U.S. capital. This project would identify the relevant civil society and business actors on Caribbean issues, supportive members of the Caribbean diplomatic corps in Washington and sympathetic elements within the U.S. Government, especially the Congress. An ultimate goal of the project would be the creation of a database of influential members of the Caribbean and African communities in the U.S., Africa and the Caribbean.

The second project is the facilitation of transportation links in a trade triangle that would enable the movement of goods and people among the three regions. Building on its agreements with the Lagos seaport and airport, Miami-Dade County is doing a study on the long-term trade potential of the agreements it signed. Meanwhile, CARICOM is investigating process for the identifying Caribbean ports that could constitute the most efficient third point of a port triangle.

Trans-Atlantic 2001 Expo International Trade and Investment Symposium

Speakers

Welcome & Program Outline
Chairperson, Tracy Wilson
Gregory Simpkins, Vice President, Foundation for Democracy in Africa
Khafra Kambon, Chairman, Emancipation Support Committee

Opening Remarks
Her Excellency Nne Furo Kurubo, High Commission of Nigeria
Honourable Edwin Leacock, Permanent Secretary, Trinidad Ministry of Enterprise Development and Foreign Affairs

Global Institutions and Business in the 21st Century Economy
Chairperson, Asha Kambon
William Maloney, Senior Economist, World Bank
Henry Gill, Communications Director, Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery
Ralph Henry, Economist/Director, Kairi Consultants Limited

U.S.-Africa-Caribbean Trade Mechanisms: AGOA and CBI
Chairperson, Khafra Kambon
Gregory Simpkins, Vice President, FDA
Beverly Falby, Senior Foreign Policy Advisor, U.S. Congressman Alcee Hastings
Fay Housty, Director of External Economic Relations, CARICOM

Operationalizing Trade and Investment in the Triangle:
Telecommunications, Shipping and Finance
Chairperson, Garth Thomas
Felipe Noguera, C.E.O., Caribbean Association of Industry & Commerce
Filippo Alairo, Senior Manager for Trade Finance, RBTT Group
Khalid Salahuddin, Deputy Port Director, Port of Miami

Concluding Remarks
Melvin Foote, President & C.E.O., Constituency for Africa

 

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