Last week, the Jamaican government announced that it had reached a teacher and nurse exchange agreement with Ghana. In addition, a joint Ghana-Jamaica Defence Cooperation agreement is in the making.
This is welcome news, as active prophecies indicate that strategic partnerships will be forged between African and Caribbean countries, and the economies will be strengthened. New industries will be fashioned and international conglomerates birthed.
Africans coming to work in the region is not new. During the brutal Trans Atlantic Slave trade, over six million Africans were delivered to slave traders who rigged them to cramped, dark, and filthy ship holds and took to the region as chattel. Since then, regional governments, mainly independent of colonisers, have avoided Africa for the most part. They have not engaged nations on the continent in any substantial trade agreements outside of the occasional commercial lifting of oil.
Official records show that current bilateral trade between Africa and the Caribbean remains relatively low, valued at approximately US$729 million in goods as of 2024–2025. However, this is projected to grow to $1.8–$2.1 billion annually by 2028. Key exports between the region and Africa include chemicals, manufactured goods, and agricultural products.
Caribbean exports to Africa have fluctuated between 0.8% and 2.3% in recent years, with Trinidad and Tobago as the largest exporter of goods, shipping roughly $423 million of fertiliser to the continent annually.
Outside of hurricanes, which too often leave the west coast of the continent and head straight to the Caribbean, African exports to the region have sat near 0.1% of its total trade since 2020.
Africa has also exported Christian worship to the Caribbean and the world. Gospel music, from the heart and soul of Nigeria alone, has evolved into a 300-million-dollar pan-African industry that is increasingly influencing global Christian music, particularly through Afrobeats-inflected praise and worship anthems.
Through gospel music, Nigeria has systematically changed its international brand to a place of high praise, contributing 35% of global gospel streams on Spotify as of 2024, up from 8% in 2020.
This resurgence is the doing of the divine, as for decades, Nigeria was well-known as a poverty-stricken place where scamming was the order of business. Nigeria had fallen from an economic boom in the 1970s when it was overwhelmingly dominated by crude petroleum and natural gas, which accounted for over 90% of export earnings and more than 80% of government revenue. Prior to the 1970s oil boom, the economy was driven by agricultural products such as palm oil, cocoa, and rubber.
Africa possesses immense natural wealth, holding roughly 30% of the world’s known mineral reserves, 10% of global oil, and 8% of natural gas. The continent is a major global producer of gold, diamonds, platinum, cobalt, and uranium. It also holds over 65% of the world’s arable land, essential for agricultural development, despite years of famine in parts of Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Mali, and some others.
For centuries, Africans and people of African descent have been the recipients of tough international trade rules and the harshest treatment by those who could do better. Race has been a major consideration when cash-rich pharmaceutical giants use Africa as the ‘guinea pig’ for medicinal trials, leaving many permanently or severely incapacitated with no recourse.
Western conglomerates continue to exploit African soil, plundering for gold, silver, crude oil, and rare earth deposits. Olive oil, palm oil, cocoa beans, and a lot else are constantly harvested, and not much is returned to the soil.
Signs are now emerging that some African nations are waking up and starting to push back against the continued pilfering of their natural resources and the exploitation of their people. A new determination for self- governance and self-sufficiency is arising within the continent. Nations like Burkina Faso, Uganda, and a few others have been leading the way in the great African resurgence.
Despite threats of economic sanctions, quite a few of the 55 countries on the continent have firmly faced down the infiltration of the reprobate ideology prescribed and promoted by America under Democratic rule, blue-blooded Canada, and their counterparts in Europe.
The Caribbean is also awaking to the real potential of strategic partnership with Africa. Last week, a Jamaican engineering company, LeeCorp Ltd., announced that it had helped to create a historic first for Africa, partnering on Africa’s first-ever analog lunar mission.
The partnership was said to be a global initiative showcasing the most ambitious space habitat simulations on Earth.
Space habitat simulations mimic the physical and psychological conditions of living on the Moon or Mars. They allow space agencies and researchers to test technology and human endurance without the extreme cost and risk of actual spaceflight.
The OPEN AFRIKA Space Exploration Analog Simulation Experiment (OASEAS) aims to advance African leadership in space science, futures literacy, and planetary stewardship through analog missions, design laboratories, and culture.
On the wings of worship and with the strategic use of its God-given resources, Africa is rising as a place of innovation and exploration. With its vast amount of arable land, the continent is poised to take its place as the global breadbasket. Food from Africa will feed its former colonisers, like the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, Europe, the United States, and other Western nations.
African leaders know that other countries will not run to their rescue in plandemics, floods, famines, or other deadly crises. They never did in better times, and they certainly will not in the worst of times. A raft of painful experiences has taught African countries that many of those with outstretched hands offering partnerships are really looking for scarce resources to plunder.
Africa may be trying to resuscitate relationships with its diaspora in the region, but Christians on the continent understand that the winning strategy is worship.
As worship rises from the once-desolate places, so too will the economies and the people.