On 7 September 2021, Heads of State and Government from Africa, CARICOM, and the Global African Diaspora assembled to strengthen the bonds that bind us together, and identified opportunities to grow together. They recognised that Africa and the Caribbean remain bound together by a shared history of dispersal, and must act as one to advance the unfinished business of building the institutions, capacities and habits of unity of purpose and action. In doing so, 7 September was designated as Africa-CARICOM Day.
The technological reordering of global production and the fracturing of a multilateral system that once offered our emergent nations some crumbs from the table have been replaced by the emergence of a world where might is right,shattering the prospects through which Africa and the Caribbean have sought to shape fair and equitable terms of participation on a single planet all mankind must share.
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The Fourth Industrial Revolution rewarded whoever controlled automation and scale, a terrain on which Africa and the Caribbean entered late and at a disadvantage due to the heavy burden of history. The Fifth Industrial Revolution revolves around the collaboration of human judgement with intelligent systems; around resilience, sustainability and the capacity to adapt rather than sheer industrial volume. For the first time, entry is not predetermined by infrastructure inherited from an earlier era. It is determined by whether a region has, today, the educated workforce and institutional capacity to participate as a producer in this new economy rather than being perpetually confined to the role of consumer.
The Caribbean, as part of the global African community, can no longer afford an educational relationship with the continent that remains occasional or symbolic. The structural need is for joint curricula, mutual recognition of qualifications, shared research capacity, and the free movement of scholars and students between African and Caribbean institutions, whereby a graduate trained on the African continent and one trained in the Caribbean are prepared for the same economic and technological realities, and can build careers, enterprises and research partnerships across the Atlantic Ocean in tackling the same realities. This has become critical as both regions approach a genuine point of inflexion.
Artificial intelligence is the clearest test of that readiness. Left ungoverned and untaught, it can deepen old patterns of dependency: economies that supply data, markets and labour but capture little of the value those inputs generate elsewhere. Approached deliberately, through AI literacy built into education systems now, through regional standards for its governance, and by sound investment in the computing and research capacity to develop rather than merely consume the technology, it offers Africa and the Caribbean a genuine chance to enter an economic era on comparable footing with competitive blocs that moved before us. That outcome will be decided in classrooms and boardrooms over the next several years, not in some distant future.
This is unfolding against a geopolitical backdrop in which the assumptions on which developing countries have relied for ages – functioning multilateral institutions, predictable alliances, a rules-based order – can no longer be taken for granted. Mighty imperial powers are turning inward or competing openly for influence over Africa and the Caribbean’s resources, markets and voices. We must vote, as the combined strengths of our Six Regions make us a formidable force which cannot be defeated.
In this context, the AU and CARICOM’s pursuit of reparatory justice is both necessary and urgent. On this fifth anniversary of Africa-CARICOM Day, for reflection, solidarity and action, we applaud the early fruits of the diligent research and exercise of our collective push, approved in Addis Ababa at the Second Summit last September. As an obvious and immediate
result, the call for reparatory justice, emanating from both sides of the ocean, has gained sharper international visibility, made evident at the March 2026 United Nations General Assembly. The resolution recognises the trans-Atlantic slave trade as ‘the gravest crime against humanity.’ This was a monumental step. The task now is to translate that conviction into positive outcomes, moving Africa and the Caribbean from parallel advocacy to genuine solidarity: a unified front able to negotiate education, technology and economic policy as one constituency, rather than as separate regions operating in conflict to secure reparative justice for all.
The PJ Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy (INAFRICARA) strongly emphasises that education is the key to advancing the socio-economic health of the people of Africa and the Caribbean. ‘I urge that we use this solemn moment to regard education as the basic tool of our own sovereign space in the political, economic, social and cultural engineering which will determine the shape and future of the world we inhabit. During the year ahead, let us work steadfastly to foster a dynamic Global Africa Coalition that honours the memory and sacrifice of our glorious ancestors and fulfils the aspirations of generations to come,’ urges the
Statesman-in-Residence, The Most Honourable PJ Patterson.
