Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre and his regional counterparts are heading to Jamaica for Sunday’s formal opening of the 2025 CARICOM Summit (July 6-8), where they’ll report on the successful exchanges between the Eastern Caribbean counterparts in Saint Lucia with Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Pierre and other leaders from the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) met President Tinubu in Saint Lucia while visiting the island on a week-long working holiday.
Tinubu is the elected leader of Africa’s most-populous nation and current Chair of the 15-member Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS).
Also representing the African Union (AU) ahead of the upcoming 2nd AU-CARICOM Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (on AU-CARICOM Day, September 7), the President discussed establishing, strengthening and deepening ties between Nigeria and OECS member-states, as well as wider Nigerian and African cooperation with CARICOM.
Africa-Caribbean ties were also simultaneously discussed in Nigeria during the President’s Saint Lucia stay, by CARICOM Secretary General Dr Carla Barnett, who, while addressing an Annual General Meeting of Afreximbank in Abuja on the theme ‘Progressive Unity in a Fractured World: Building a Global African Coalition for Development’, underscored the strategic importance of strengthening Africa-Caribbean ties at all available levels.
The Saint Lucia summits between Caribbean leaders and the Nigerian president yielded fruitful results, including key Economic Collaboration Agreements on Joint Commissions and Political Consultation through Economic Diplomacy and Trade; Trade and Investment Partnerships including Maritime University Collaboration; Technical Aid Corps (TAC) Programmes including Joint Scientific Research Initiatives; and Visa Waivers for OECS diplomatic and official passport holders.
Saint Lucia and OECS nations also benefitted from scholarships to be granted by the Federal Republic and the leaders all stressed mutual understanding of the need to create air and sea transport mechanisms for tourism and trade.
President Tinubu and his delegation expressed particular-interest in developing bilateral ties and mutual cooperation in Saint Lucia, where up to a third of enslaved Africans originated in Nigeria and other West African States.
He also noted that Nigeria has “the largest African Diaspora” in the world, reflected also by the presence of a community of Nigerian nationals in Saint Lucia.
Besides, Saint Lucia’s Sir Darnley Alexander served as the first Chief Justice of the state of Niger (the most-populous) after Nigeria’s independence and in 1975 he was appointed as the first non-Nigerian to the post of Chief Justice of the Federal Republic.
Prime Minister Pierre, as President Tinubu’s host (and his OECS colleagues) will therefore have much good news to deliver to counterparts in Montego Bay.
The Jamaica summit will also likely have other urgent regional matters to discuss, including on the issue of CARICOM’s continuing 12-year-old pursuit of Reparations from Europe for Slavery and Native Genocide.
The summit precedes a controversial plan by Jamaica to call on Britain’s King Charles III (as the island’ Head of State) to petition the British Privy Council to determine whether Slavery was legal.
Caribbean reparations advocates are worried the Jamaica plan – framed as an experimental move as the island seeks to move from monarchy to republicanism within the Commonwealth –could create a dangerous precedent that can compromise the joint regional thrust, if the Privy Council rules slavery was legal.
The summit is also expected to discuss a revised CARICOM Ten-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice (TPP) and immediate plans ahead for CARICOM’s eventual negotiations with Europe for Reparations.
The MoBay summit also immediately follows a visit to Brussels and London by a broad-based team of Caribbean and European reparations advocates, facilitated by the Repair Campaign, who met with European Union (EU) parliamentarians in Brussels and with British legislators and reparations advocates in London.
Repair – led by ex-Digicel Chair Denis O’Brien – is involved in a long-term engagement with CARICOM’s leaders that involves supporting the region’s reparations demands in Europe and establishment of related pilot projects in five regional states, according to a 25-year plan that looks ahead at issues like how reparations, when secured, will be utilised to the best for Caribbean descendants of slavery and native genocide.
Repair is engaged with departments of the University of the West Indies (UWI), including the Office of the Vice Chancellor and the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), and top UWI academics have also carried out several national consultations in CARICOM member-states, over a year-long period, to prepare and submit related Draft Socio Economic and Reparatory Justice Plans to regional governments.
Reparations and Africa-Caribbean ties will be top talking points, among others, as deepening cross-Atlantic ties with the African continent is seen as crucial for another issue the leaders are also likely to address: designation by the United Nations (UN) of 2025 to 2034 as the Second Decade for People of African Descent.
The first Chair of the UN’s Permanent Forum for People of African Descent was Saint Lucia’s veteran ambassador and academic Dr June Soomer, who’s also a former Director General of the Association of Caribbean States.
Prime Minister Pierre’s first international summit attended after his July 26, 2021 election victory was the 1st AU-CARICOM Summit on September 7; and one month earlier (on August 1st, 2021) he’d declared the start of an official triennium of recognition of Emancipation Months (in 2022, 2023 and 2024).
A new triennium widely expected to be launched on August 1, 2025 by the island’s Cultural Development Foundation (CDF).
Saint Lucia’s National Reparations Committee (NRC) says it plans to join the CDF and other related local entities to observe the launch of the Second Decade for People of African Descent this year.
Emancipation Month activities also always include commemoration of the birth of Marcus Garvey (August 17) and observance of International Day for people of African Descent on August 31.
This weekend’s Jamaica summit is therefore likely to be a momentous one for Caribbean-Africa ties tomorrow and beyond, as CARICOM leaders chart the region’s future together.