Beyond fifty years of solidarity, the hard part is before you

…An Open Letter to the OACPS Council of Ministers

Your Excellencies

As you gather in Brussels for the 121st Session of the Council of Ministers, you do so at a defining moment in the history of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS). This is more than another ministerial meeting. It is an opportunity to determine whether an organisation that has successfully navigated more than five decades of geopolitical change is prepared to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world.

The timing of your meeting is particularly significant. Only days before this session, the Secretary-General, H.E. Moussa Saleh Batraki, received Nigeria’s newly appointed Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, H.E. Dr. Adeyemi Adebayo Emmanuel, at the OACPS Headquarters in Brussels. Their discussions reportedly covered implementation of the Malabo Declaration, institutional reform, financial sustainability, preparations for this very Council meeting, and progress towards establishing the OACPS African Diaspora Centre of Excellence in Nigeria. That meeting was more than diplomatic protocol. It quietly reflected both the promise and the unfinished business before your Organisation.

I write this letter not as a critic standing outside the institution, but as someone who believes deeply in the continuing necessity of principled multilateral cooperation. Throughout my professional life in public service, international trade, diaspora engagement and economic diplomacy, I have come to appreciate that institutions matter. They create continuity where politics changes. They preserve cooperation when national interests diverge. But institutions ultimately earn their legitimacy not by their history alone, but by their capacity to deliver results.

The OACPS deserves genuine recognition for what it has accomplished.

Few organisations have succeeded in maintaining meaningful cooperation among countries as geographically dispersed, culturally diverse and economically different as those of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. From its origins in the 1970s to its evolution into the present-day OACPS, the Organisation has provided an enduring platform for political dialogue, collective negotiation, development cooperation and South-South solidarity.

It has successfully navigated changing international orders, preserved a common diplomatic voice across three continents, supported vulnerable states in global negotiations on climate and sustainable development, and maintained institutional continuity through periods that have tested many multilateral organisations. These are not insignificant achievements.

Indeed, survival itself deserves respect. Yet survival cannot become the destination. The world in which the OACPS was created no longer exists. Today’s global landscape is defined by shifting centres of economic power, strategic competition among major powers, artificial intelligence, digital commerce, climate finance, demographic transformation and increasingly influential diaspora communities. Institutions built for yesterday’s realities cannot simply rely on yesterday’s successes.

The challenge before you is therefore not whether the OACPS should continue. The challenge is whether it can transform. If I may respectfully suggest one simple test, every international organisation should ultimately answer three questions: First, can it convene? Second, can it deliver? Third, can it endure?

The OACPS has unquestionably demonstrated that it can convene. It has equally demonstrated remarkable institutional endurance. The question now is whether it can consistently deliver outcomes that are visible not merely to diplomats and ministers, but to entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, young people, innovators and ordinary citizens across its member states.