President Paul Kagame on July 5, arrived in Trinidad and Tobago to attend the 45th Meeting of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM).

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This year’s CARICOM conference, taking place from July 3 to 5, is convened under the chairmanship of Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister of Dominica.

Kagame is attending the meeting alongside other leaders including the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, Commonwealth Secretary General, Patricia Scotland, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the Prime Minister of Korea.

The meeting will also be an occasion to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas, which established the Caribbean community, now composed of 15-member countries.

This comes at a time when the Head of State has been making official visits to some of the Caribbean countries in efforts to cement global south-south cooperation for Rwanda and Africa as a whole.

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In 2022, Kagame said there are great hopes for deeper cooperation between the African Union (AU) and the CARICOM, recognizing that they had both agreed to create a bridge between the two regions, exploring different areas of interest including trade and investment, sports, tourism, agriculture, aviation among others.

Currently, the CARICOM community consists of Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Haiti, Jamaica, Grenada, Guyana, Montserrat, St. Lucia, Suriname, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago.