President John Dramani Mahama has pledged to push for the Caribbean’s inclusion in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) once he takes over as African Union (AU) Chairperson in 2027, a proposal he announced during a state visit to Jamaica. Speaking at a joint press briefing with Jamaican Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness in Kingston on August 3, 2026, Mahama said expanding AfCFTA’s remit to cover Caribbean Community (CARICOM) states would be one of the priorities he champions during his AU tenure.
“One of the things that I would champion when I become AU chair next year is to expand the remit of the African Continental Free Trade Area to include the Caribbean,” Mahama told reporters, according to a statement from the Presidency of the Republic of Ghana.
What Mahama Said in Kingston
Mahama framed the proposal around scale. He noted that AfCFTA already links African economies into a market of roughly 1.4 billion people with a combined gross domestic product of nearly US$3 trillion, allowing member states to trade several categories of goods, including electrical cables, transformers, iron and steel products, processed foods and pharmaceuticals, duty-free and tariff-free.
He argued that folding CARICOM into that arrangement could open new commercial pathways between Africa and the Caribbean, regions bound by a shared history but currently limited by low trade volumes between them. Mahama was careful not to oversell the timeline, however.
“With regards to trade, we don’t kid ourselves that you snap your fingers and suddenly our trade volumes will go up. We need to work at it.”
He also disclosed that African states are developing a local-currency payment platform intended to let businesses settle cross-border trade transactions without routing through third-party currencies, a move he said would help cut the cost of doing business across the continent and, eventually, with partners such as the Caribbean.
A Proposal, Not Yet Policy
Mahama’s pledge is a personal commitment to advocate for the idea once he holds the AU’s rotating chairmanship, rather than an announcement of an agreed policy change. Any formal expansion of AfCFTA’s membership or an associated trade arrangement with CARICOM would need to go through the AfCFTA Secretariat, which administers the agreement on behalf of AU member states, as well as CARICOM’s own decision-making structures.
AfCFTA currently groups African Union member states that have signed and ratified the agreement. Extending trade preferences to a bloc outside the continent would be a significant structural step, and Mahama’s remarks in Kingston amount to the opening pitch for that conversation rather than its conclusion.
Ghana’s Road to the AU Chair
Mahama is set to become AU Chairperson in 2027, succeeding Angola’s President João Lourenço. His path to the position was cleared in December 2025, when ECOWAS heads of state formally endorsed him for the chairmanship, a rare bloc-wide backing that strengthened Ghana’s bid ahead of the African Union’s leadership rotation.
The AfCFTA proposal was one of two priorities Mahama outlined for his eventual AU tenure during the Jamaica trip. The other centres on the African diaspora’s right to return, with Mahama describing repatriation as “a right of all persons of African descent to return to the mother continent and settle or reside if they wish.” Ghana is preparing legislation to make it easier for members of the diaspora to obtain permanent residence and citizenship.
Inside the Jamaica Visit
The AfCFTA remarks came partway through a four-day official visit to Jamaica, running from August 2 to August 5, 2026, Mahama’s first as Ghana’s president to the Caribbean nation. The trip was built around strengthening Ghana-Jamaica relations, deepening Ghana’s ties with CARICOM more broadly, and advancing the global reparations agenda for the transatlantic slave trade.
- Bilateral talks with Prime Minister Holness on trade, investment, culture and South-South cooperation
- An address to a joint sitting of Jamaica’s Parliament at Gordon House
- A Trade and Investment Dialogue paired with a tour of the Kingston Freeport
- A high-level reparations dialogue at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, with Sir Hilary Beckles, chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission
- A wreath-laying at the shrine of Marcus Garvey at National Heroes Park
- A visit to the Ghanaian Village Houses at Seville Heritage Park in St Ann
- Participation in Jamaica’s 64th Independence Anniversary celebrations, including a state dinner hosted by Governor-General Sir Patrick Allen
Ghanaian officials described the visit as an effort to position Ghana as a gateway for CARICOM-Africa engagement, tying trade ambitions to the cultural and historical links both sides have invoked repeatedly, from Garvey’s pan-Africanist legacy to Ghana’s own diaspora homecoming initiatives.
Why It Matters
For Ghana, the AfCFTA-CARICOM proposal fits a foreign policy pattern that has run through Mahama’s presidency: using Ghana’s diplomatic weight, including its upcoming AU chairmanship, to position the country as a bridge between the African continent and its diaspora in the Americas. AfCFTA itself remains a work in progress even within Africa, with implementation challenges around tariff schedules, rules of origin and infrastructure still being ironed out among existing state parties.
Layering a Caribbean dimension onto that framework would raise fresh technical and legal questions, from how CARICOM states would accede to the agreement to how existing preferential arrangements between individual African and Caribbean countries would be reconciled. Mahama’s comments in Kingston signal where he intends to direct AU-level diplomacy once he assumes the chair, without committing either bloc to a specific mechanism or timetable.
What’s Next
Mahama is due to formally take over the AU chairmanship in 2027. Whether the Caribbean-inclusion idea advances beyond a stated ambition will depend on engagement between the AfCFTA Secretariat, the African Union’s member states and CARICOM’s institutions in the period ahead, alongside the diplomatic groundwork Mahama and Prime Minister Holness signalled they intend to continue building between Accra and Kingston.