On the open­ing day of the 51st Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing last week in St Lu­cia, 25-year-old Rahym Au­gustin-Joseph de­liv­ered a sting­ing analy­sis of the state of the re­gion­al bloc. His words were so sober­ing; Heads of Gov­ern­ment like Mia Mot­t­ley and Dr Ir­faan Ali were pic­tured nod­ding along at times. So­cial me­dia users con­grat­u­lat­ed him for his ster­ling speech, which, by many es­ti­mates, was longer than the re­marks of some lead­ers.

Au­gustin-Joseph didn’t trav­el far to get to the meet­ing. He was born in Bex­on, a rur­al area in Cas­tries, the cap­i­tal of St Lu­cia, but he is cur­rent­ly in Eng­land. In No­vem­ber 2024, he was named the Rhodes Schol­ar for the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean, where he is pur­su­ing post­grad­u­ate stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford, deep­en­ing his ex­per­tise in law and pol­i­tics.

His rise has been steady over the last sev­en years. First, he com­plet­ed a Bach­e­lor of Laws (LLB) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Cave Hill Cam­pus, with first class ho­n­ours. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he al­so grad­u­at­ed from UWI with First Class Ho­n­ours in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence and Law, where he was se­lect­ed as the Vale­dic­to­ri­an of the Grad­u­at­ing Class of 2023.