Jamaica’s plan to dispatch a trade mission to Ghana next month is a potentially important development, not only for the island but for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). It can help to energise recent initiatives to expand economic relations between the Caribbean and Africa.

Framed differently, the Jamaican mission may be made to go beyond bilateral possibilities, serving as a starting point for accelerating and widening the region’s engagement with the Global South at a time of deepening uncertainty over the old international order and the rules-based system it sustained.

The proposed trip by senior government trade and investment officials, along with at least 38 companies, was announced last week by Jamaica’s foreign affairs and foreign trade minister, Kamina Johnson Smith, when she addressed the biennial conference of diaspora Jamaicans.