Youth, Debt, and Destiny: The Last Stand for Africa and the Caribbean in the New World Order

Many a financial commentator down the years has sought to define capital. Whilst they might differ on the wording, most agree that capital is a coward. That it flees from corruption and bad policies, conflict and unpredictability. That it shuns ignorance, disease and illiteracy. It goes where it is welcomed and where investors can be confident of a return on the resources they have put at risk. It goes to countries where women can work, children can read, and entrepreneurs can dream.

Youth, Debt, and Destiny: The crossroads of risk and reform in Africa and the Caribbean. What’s at stake isn’t just economics—it’s the future.

As global supply chains realign and a new world order emerges, Africa and the Caribbean must now consider abandoning fragile trade arrangements, resist political improvisation, and build credible institutions that can attract enduring capital.

The world is no longer flat, it is fracturing. From Washington to Beijing, capitals are redesigning and contesting trade flows with geopolitics in mind. Efficiency has ceded priority to security. In this context, regions once peripheral to the core of global commerce, Africa and the Caribbean face a stark choice: integrate and strengthen governance, or drift into the economic abyss. Africa and the Caribbean’s face a stark choice in this evolving Trumpian reality, either align with the US where it has accumulated unbridled USD debt and trade obligations (the devil you know). Or gamble on the Chinese Belt and Road economic model (the devil you don’t know). Such a choice may well turn out to be existential. Consider for a moment the quote by Lester Thurow, former MIT economist and author of The Future of Capitalism

There is no such thing as a truly free market in international trade. Trade is politics by other means, and like politics, it evolves with power.

Both Africa and the Caribbean boast grand visions of integration. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) aims to unite 54 countries into a single market of 1.4 billion people. CARICOM, the Caribbean Community, promises economic and political coordination among 15 member states. But on both sides of the Atlantic, rhetoric continues to outpace reality.

Aspirations Without Architecture

Intra-African trade remains below 14% of total commerce; CARICOM’s intra-regional trade fares little better, hovering around 15%. In contrast, intra-EU trade accounts for over 60%. Despite decades of summitry, treaty signings, and vision documents, the blocs remain plagued by the same ailment: weak institutional capacity to implement their own agreements.

Tariff schedules are inconsistently applied. Infrastructure, physical and digital, is lacking. Non-tariff barriers and redundant bureaucracy stifle the movement of goods, services, and people. And beneath it all lies an even more damaging dysfunction: erratic leadership that substitutes planning with malfeasance, to put it politely.

Capricious Policy and Investor Flight

Across both Africa and the Caribbean, investment suffers not from scarcity of opportunity, but from an overabundance of risk—especially political risk. The deeper problem is not hostile regulation, but unpredictable governance; lack of respect for rule of law and following, due process or at least, that is how the investment community has seen it.

Take Tanzania under the late John Magufuli. In 2017, sweeping revisions to mining laws spooked foreign investors, with firms like Acacia Mining hit by billion-dollar tax claims and export bans. Though intended to assert sovereignty over resources, the abruptness and lack of due process undermined investor confidence for years.

In the Caribbean, Jamaica’s bauxite sector offers a parallel cautionary tale. Repeated renegotiations of tax waivers and export terms, often midstream, have led to legal disputes and costly arbitration. Investors accustomed to contractual sanctity instead find themselves navigating shifting sands.

“It’s not just what governments do, it’s how and when they do it that frightens capital,” says Professor Avinash Persaud, former advisor to the Caribbean Development Bank. “Unannounced policy reversals are the surest way to ensure capital doesn’t return.”.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the WTO went further:

"Investors don’t expect perfection,” she says. “But they do need predictability, transparency, and a sense that the rules won’t change mid-game.”

Weak Institutions, Strong Men Behaving Badly

Too many regional blocs depend on personalities rather than institutions. Elections often trigger wholesale reversals in policy, staffing, and regulation, rendering long-term planning futile. In both regions, trade secretariats are typically underfunded, politically tethered, and bereft of enforcement powers.

ASEAN offers a rare counterexample. While far from perfect, its institutions function with a level of technocratic independence and diplomatic agility that has enabled supply chain integration across borders. Southeast Asia’s rise as a hub for electronics, textiles, and automotive components is no coincidence; it is the result of deliberate coordination and institutional maturity.

Africa and the Caribbean must evolve beyond performative multilateralism. Their regional bodies should not merely convene summits; they must execute strategy. That means building technocratic bureaucracies that transcend electoral cycles, implementing regional courts with binding authority, and insulating trade policy from domestic political churn.

Rule of Law: The Real Infrastructure Gap

Much is made of infrastructure deficits in both regions, but legal certainty may be the more pressing shortfall. According to the Mo Ibrahim Index and the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators (prior to its discontinuation), rule of law and contract enforcement remain chronic weaknesses. Courts are overburdened or underutilized; arbitration systems are often ad hoc. Far too long malfeasance has been rife and powerful political interests "the frontier" have been prominent in suborning and, as a consequence, siphoning the benefits of investments with scant accountability; this form of embezzlement must stop if there is to be meaningful progress. For trade blocs to work, businesses must believe that cross-border contracts will be honoured and disputes fairly resolved. Without this, the most eloquent trade protocols will remain decorative.

A Blueprint for Convergence

There are signs of progress. Rwanda’s digitized customs system, Ghana’s National AfCFTA Coordination Office, and the Eastern Caribbean’s monetary union all illustrate what can be done when political will meets institutional focus. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, for instance, has managed to stabilize its currency and maintain credible monetary policy across small island states—which is no small feat.

What’s needed now is convergence around key sectors. Both Africa and the Caribbean should identify and develop regional value chains in agro-processing, renewable energy, tourism, and digital services. This requires harmonized standards, pooled infrastructure, and regional development banks that offer equity rather than debt.

To reduce reliance on externally dictated credit ratings, a pan-African and pan-Caribbean ratings agency with transparent methodology and governance should be fast-tracked. Such institutions could help recalibrate the "emerging market" risk narrative that continues to inflate borrowing costs and suppress investment.

Strategic Maturity in a Fragmented World

The global trade order is becoming club-based. The US’s push for “friendshoring,” the EU’s carbon border taxes, and China’s state-capitalist supply chains are all evidence that integration is now political, not just economic.

To be at the table rather than on the menu, Africa and the Caribbean must offer more than raw materials and sun-kissed beaches. They must offer credibility: in governance, in regulation, and in execution.

A hard but necessary question arises: what meaningful role will Africa and the Caribbean play in a global economy increasingly defined by advanced technology and hyper-efficiency? In the CARICOM region, nearly 70% of the population—about 12 million people—are under the age of 40. Across Africa, that figure climbs to over 80%, amounting to more than 1.2 billion individuals. Will this immense demographic strength translate into influence and innovation, or will these young populations be confined to the lower tiers of the global value chain, valued only for their low-cost labour? These uncomfortable realities must be confronted if regional strategies are to move beyond aspirational rhetoric and embrace pragmatic reform.

The challenge is not only technical, but also moral and political. Leaders in both regions must abandon the temptation of short-term populism and build institutions that will outlast them. A new generation of regionalism—functional, rules-based, and market-driven—must replace the symbolism of treaties without teeth.

Perhaps the sagest advice at a time of a paradigm shift in trade relationships comes from Karl Polanyi, economic historian and author of The Great Transformation when he said “The idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. It meant that the human economy was to be subordinated to the laws of the market. But markets are human creations and like all institutions, they are remade in times of crisis.”