Barbados conglomerate Goddard Enterprises Limited (GEL) is trying to enter the African market.
The group’s managing director Anthony Ali said so last week while in St George’s, Grenada for the fourth Afri-Caribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF2025).
While there continues to be major concern about the lack of direct air and shipping links between Africa and the Caribbean, his suggested solution is that rather than focus on logistics headaches, products from this region could be produced in Africa under certain conditions.
He used the examples of insecticide Bop and insect repellent, Beep which are produced by Barbados-based GEL subsidiary McBride (Caribbean) Limited, the Caribbean’s leading aerosol manufacturer.
The managing director was speaking during an ACTIF2025 panel discussion on Building Bridges Amid Global Fragmentation: Practical Approaches To Creating Africa-Caribbean Air And Sea Links.
“So we’re talking about trade between Africa and the Caribbean, and we can sit here and talk about logistics all day long, we will always have challenges. I think we need to be smarter than that. There are other ways to solve this problem,” Ali asserted.
“For an example, one of the companies we own [McBridge], we have about 50 per cent excess capacity. I could put on a second shift and get to 100 per cent excess capacity right now.
“I ship my products to 22 countries around Latin America and the Caribbean, and in most countries, I have somewhere between 30 and 60 per cent market share. So this is an insecticide and insect repellent, great product called Bop and Beep.
The GEL boss continued: “More importantly, if I were to enter the African market, which I’m trying to do, and I was hugely successful in, let’s take Nigeria, and I got five per cent market share, I would have to build a new factory.
“So the point is, why am I shipping product from Barbados, a high cost, high energy, high labour, high freight location, to Africa? Why am I not exporting my intellectual property, my brand, my technology, my formulation, and having somebody in Africa build that product for me.
So we’ve done this a couple of times, and that, to me, is how you solve your trade problems. I’m not going to get tied up in logistics of how I get a container from Barbados to Ghana, I’m going to put the product right where the market is. I’m going to lower my cost, I’m going to create employment, and I’m going to drive my economic success.”
Having participated in three edition of ACTIF, Ali lamented the slow progress in increasing trade between Africa and the Caribbean.
“This is the third [ACTIF] summit that I have been in and every single time we talk about these aspirational goals, we talk about these wonderful trade lanes and the opportunities that exist between CARICOM and the African yrade union. Here we are, and I hate to say this, but we have not made a lot of progress,” he said.
“So the fundamental question is, why? What’s not happening? And I think we need to be practical, and we need to understand that unless there is significant political will, unless there is significant financial capital, and unless there is a well defined strategy that will articulate at least five to ten years out how we build that roadmap and execute it, we are going to be here, I am going to be here, in another three or four years, having the same conversation.
He suggested the establishment of special economic zones in Africa and the Caribbean to “accelerate the development of trade between the two regions . . . where we create the opportunity for investors to invest, investments in ports, investment in organisations and economic development and trade”.
During the session moderated by BBC News news anchor Lukwesa Burak, Lerato Mataboge, African Union commissioner for infrastructure, energy and digitisation, said that for Africa and the Caribbean to have a more substantial trade relationship it was important for countries on the continent to collectively put their house in order first.
“On the African side, one of the priority positions we took was that, firstly, of course, we need to integrate,” she said.
“There is the tariff element, what we call the market integration, there is then the need for infrastructure development as a critical pillar and the third pillar then is about manufacturing capacity and manufacturing capability, because our logic is that there is no use having world class infrastructure, but you are not producing anything.
“And equally, if you are producing you do need to have the infrastructure, and similarly, you need to then to deal with the policies, the harmonisation, the regulatory issues. So the three pronged approach to our integration is quite critical,” the commissioner noted.
She added: “So without those three ingredients, we cannot have meaningful conversations about even integrating with other regions outside of ourselves, so we have to accelerate Africa’s integration.”
In the case of the Caribbean, Senator Barry Griffin, chairman of the Bahamas Trade Commission, said there was a major need for the private sector to play a leading role in expanding trade between the two regions.
“The private sector is the most important part of this. We can sit around the table as policy makers all day as we wish, but it’s the private sector that actually does business,” he stated.
“And so for me in the Bahamas, every time we have these types of conferences and seminars, I’m sure to invite the private sector, because we are now part of many trade agreements that are sitting there collecting dust.
“Those of us in CARICOM, we have an EPA (economic partnership agreement) with the United Kingdom. We have an EPA with the European Union, and many of our businesses are not taking advantage of it because they’re not aware of what they can take advantage of
“But the other side is certainly taking advantage of doing business in the Caribbean. We can create the policy, but we need to make sure that we bring the private sector along with us,” Griffin advised.
Issues raised by the panel are among those that would be expected to occupy the attention of a proposed Global Africans Commission.
Outgoing Afrexbimbank president and chairman Benedict Oramah, who recommended the commission’s establishment at the opening of ACTIF and reiterated it when the meeting closed, along with Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell, hopes that the commission idea will advance next month at a summit of CARICOM and the African Union in Adis Ababa.