KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC -Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves left right here on Sunday for London earlier than touring to the West African nations of Nigeria and Ghana.
“I’ve a few conferences in London, after which I’m going on to Nigeria,” he stated on the Argyle Worldwide Airport in a video posted to the Fb web page of the Workplace of the Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves
Gonsalves is predicted to reach in Nigeria on Wednesday and can ship a lecture on “Technological Emancipation of Africa and the Caribbean in Digital Area and International Drive for Reparation” at Bells College of Expertise of Nigeria’s fifteenth Convocation ceremony on Friday.
He’s scheduled to journey to Accra, Ghana, on Sunday, the place he’ll meet with the Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo.
Gonsalves stated that former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo had invited him to go to Nigeria when Obasanjo and President of the African Export-Import Financial institution (Afreximbank), Benedict Oramah, visited St. Vincent and the Grenadines in August.
The prime minister stated Obasanjo invited him to Nigeria “to handle the emancipation of African expertise inside the digital house and to talk about the linkage between that difficulty and reparations.”
Gonsalves stated that each of those points contact and concern sustainable improvement and sustainable improvement targets.
“Inside that context, I might be doing the dialogue. However, importantly, too, I used to be to speak with the management of the Bells College of Expertise to have hyperlinks with our group faculty as minister chargeable for tertiary schooling,” Gonsalves stated.
He stated that St. Vincent and the Grenadines must “develop very sharply, very markedly, science, expertise, and innovation past what now we have created already.
“That’s the reason, for example, now we have been pushing the curricula into these areas, and that’s why I’m in quest of constructing a contemporary science and expertise innovation lab related to the Group Faculty and linked with the International Campus of the College of the West Indies.”
Gonsalves stated his go to to Nigeria is important from the standpoint of tertiary schooling.
“My lecture is, in a way, a part of the entire bundle of issues which carry me there,” he stated, including that he’ll then have “a concise go to to see the president of Ghana.”
He stated he had met Akufo-Addo, who made an official go to to the island in June 2019, at completely different conferences on many issues.
“And West Africa, in fact, is an space which is linked, umbilically to the folks of the Caribbean as a result of the enslaved African our bodies, those that have been stolen, seized and introduced as property to the Caribbean as chattel to work on sugar plantations, folks predominantly from Africa and all through the Caribbean, that’s why their lineage is.
“So you need to construct on an ongoing foundation this specific joinder, significantly in respect of reparation but in addition solidarity by means of the Africa, Brazil, Caribbean, Diaspora Fee, which this authorities has proposed and which has gotten assist from the African Union and CARICOM.”
He famous that there’s a important variety of Nigerians who got here right here as college students.
“A few of them, their funding preparations have been minimize by the Nigerian authorities, and they’re doing good work right here, and they’re regularising themselves, and now we have 4 Ghanaian college students which we gave scholarships. Ghana hyperlinks with us by means of the Ministry of Agriculture on cocoa-related issues.
“Once more, now we have to construct all these hyperlinks, and we share widespread positions on issues touching and regarding local weather change, reform of the monetary structure, the IMF, the World Financial institution, availability or assets for these former colonies. We met collectively lately, the G77 in Havana, and there are different engagements now we have had since then, and that is simply one other one, however an essential one with two very important nations in West Africa.”
Gonsalves is main a four-member delegation that features the island’s Excessive Commissioner to London, Cenio Lewis. The delegation is scheduled to return on November 8.
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