The Afrixembank is ready for the start of construction of its US$180 million state-of-the-art trade centre in Barbados.
Okechukwu Ihejirika, acting chief operating officer at the Caribbean Office of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) located in Barbados said the breaking of ground in March for the iconic structure was a signal that the Pan-African development bank was in Barbados and the Caribbean to stay.
It will be the first Afreximbank African Trade Centre (AATC) in the Caribbean and the first outside the continent in a bid to improve intra-and extra-African trade.
The presence of the structure on the 6.4 acres of land granted to it by the Government at Jemmotts Lane, St Michael, is a rewriting of the slave history, he said.
It will be home to Afreximbank’s CARICOM office, a conference facility, a technology and SME incubator, a Digital Trade Gateway, 100-room hotel, and a trade and exhibition centre, as well as office space.
Government faced criticism over the concessions it extended to the Afreximbank and was further chastised when Fitch Ratings recently downgraded the Bank’s Long-Term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘BBB-’ from ‘BBB’ and it’s Short-Term IDR to ‘F3’ from ‘F2’ and the long-term ratings on the bank’s Global Medium-Term Note Programme and debt issuances to ‘BBB-’ from ‘BBB’ (the African Peer Review Mechanism later said Fitch’s downgrade was based on flawed loan classification).
However, at the 32nd Afreximbank Annual Meetings 2025 in Abuja, Nigeria, the site of the first meeting, Ihejirika said the construction was the beginning of a new Middle
Passage between the African Continent and the Caribbean region.
“We are progressing, advancing to the construction stage,” he said yesterday.
Not only was the bank staying, but it is also looking to help create a Caricomeximbank.
He said the financing gap in the region is huge and no single entity would be willing to undertake such responsibility.
“So, we need to create an institution that can transition from what the Afreximbank started as, moving from a simple beginning to something that is a giant,” the COO stated.
He said the bank had partnered with 12 of the CARICOM countries and was “happy to say hopefully we will welcome” Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
The bank, he stated, was working with the CARICOM Development Fund in facilitating areas traditional lending institutions found unattractive and one area is the energy sector.
Antoinette Connell is in Abuja, Nigeria, sponsored by the Afreximbank, covering the bank’s 32nd annual meetings.
