CELAC-Africa Forum Opens New Trade Route

Latin America and Africa just held their first joint trade forum, signed a direct shipping route across the Atlantic, and sealed $16 million in deals in four days. The first-ever CELAC-Africa High-Level Forum in Bogotá ran March 18–21, with Colombia and Ghana opening a direct Cartagena-to-Tema shipping corridor that bypasses traditional European and North American transit hubs entirely. Almost no English-language outlet covered it.

Here's why that matters more than the headline suggests.

A Shipping Lane Built on a Slave Route

Ghana's Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa signed the maritime deal at the forum's closing ceremony. Colombia's Vice President Francia Márquez — the first Afro-Colombian to hold the office — co-signed it.

Ablakwa called it a transformation of "the Atlantic corridor which previously represented the horror of slavery and a mass grave" into "a voyage of opportunity, job creation and economic empowerment."

That's not just symbolism. The Tema-Cartagena route eliminates transshipment layovers that currently force cargo between West Africa and South America through European ports. Goods that once needed to stop in Rotterdam or Hamburg will move directly. Lower costs. Faster delivery. No Western middleman.

Ghana's Ports and Harbours Authority inspected Cartagena's facilities on the sidelines — logistics reality, not diplomatic theatre.

The Numbers Behind the Noise

The forum brought together over 130 businesses from both continents. A matchmaking roundtable alone generated $16 million in transactions.

That's small. But zoom out. Brazil's trade with African countries grew 11% over three years. Colombia's bilateral trade with Nigeria, Algeria, and Senegal roughly doubled since 2022. Its trade with Ethiopia grew twentyfold — from a low base, but twentyfold is twentyfold. Mexico opened a chamber of commerce in Lagos last year. Ghana is negotiating to open an embassy in Mexico City.

Globally, South-South merchandise exports hit $6.8 trillion in 2025, up from $0.5 trillion in 1995, according to UNCTAD. Today, 57% of developing-country exports go to other developing markets. The Latin America fuel and fiscal crisis and the broader trade slowdown are accelerating the search for alternative partners.

Who Covered This — and Who Didn't

This is where the perception gap gets interesting. teleSUR, Agência Brasil, and AllAfrica ran detailed coverage. Ghana's Graphic Online published the shipping deal's specifics. Foreign Policy's Latin America Brief mentioned it — one paragraph, buried mid-newsletter.

CNN, BBC, Reuters: nothing. The New York Times: nothing. The first institutional forum where Latin America and Africa built direct dialogue without a Western chair or mediator, and the English-speaking world's biggest newsrooms didn't notice.

CELAC — the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States — was founded in 2011 specifically as a space without the US and Canada. Adding Africa to that table creates a bloc of 33 Latin American countries plus African Union members. Combined: over 2 billion people, vast mineral wealth, and growing trade infrastructure that doesn't route through Washington or Brussels.

Why It Matters Now

The Hormuz crisis makes this urgent. With oil transit disrupted and fuel shortages hitting 166 Brazilian cities, both continents need supply chains that don't depend on a single chokepoint. Direct Atlantic routes between Africa and Latin America bypass the Middle Eastern bottleneck entirely.

Brazil's CELAC trade already exceeds BRL 100 billion — more than its trade with the European Union. The next global trade architecture isn't being designed in Davos. It's being built between Cartagena and Tema, between São Paulo and Lagos, one shipping container at a time.

The only question is whether anyone outside those two continents will notice before it's too late to catch up.