West and Central Africa’s largest airline, Air Peace, has drawn a brand-new arc across the Atlantic. On 12 June 2025, the carrier deployed one of its Boeing 777 aircraft, which lifted off from Abuja’s Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport and, ten unbroken hours later, touched down at Robert L. Bradshaw International Airport in Basseterre—marking the first-ever Nigerian dateline on St Kitts and Nevis’s arrivals board.
The milestone service was arranged for the Afri-Caribbean Business Expo in the Eastern Caribbean, conveying delegations from Nigeria and underscoring the airline’s growing trajectory and strategic foray into the global market. The conference, curated by Aquarian Consult—an Abuja-based management-consulting and human-capital-development firm—anchors the five-day Afri-Caribbean Business Expo (ACBE), running from 12 to 17 June 2025 in Basseterre. The expo is the direct follow-up to Aquarian Consult’s inaugural Africa-Caribbean Investment Summit (AACIS 2025), held in March 2025, where the Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, a full ministerial delegation, and former President of Mauritius, H.E. Dr Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, convened with other distinguished guests. At AACIS ’25, two memoranda of understanding—one in agriculture and one in the creative economy—were signed, laying the cornerstone for a transatlantic bridge that the ACBE now seeks to strengthen.
Delegates in Basseterre include representatives of Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), and the Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM), alongside St Kitts and Nevis’s Ministries of Agriculture and Small Business, Creative Economy, and Sports. Their shared mandate: foster deeper trade and investment ties between Africa and the Caribbean and turn signed agreements into tangible projects.
The St Kitts and Nevis flight is the airline’s third foray into the Caribbean in five years. On 21 December 2020, the carrier operated an 11-hour flight from Lagos to Montego Bay, establishing the first non-stop link between Nigeria and Jamaica and showcasing the long-range potential of Air Peace’s then-new triple-seven fleet. On 5 August 2023, another Boeing 777 carried investors and carnival-goers from Lagos to V.C. Bird International Airport in Antigua and Barbuda, earning Air Peace the distinction of being the first Nigerian airline to land in the twin-island state. Now, with the 12 June 2025 service to St Kitts and Nevis, the airline has completed a triad of firsts, establishing direct access to three key Caribbean territories.
The flight relied on one of Air Peace’s two Boeing 777 aircraft, which also sustain the airline’s daily Lagos–London Gatwick schedule launched on 30 March 2024—another historic achievement for a private Nigerian carrier. Chairman and CEO Dr Allen Onyema has hinted that more long-haul aircraft are on the way. In April 2024 he told Arise TV that the airline is finalising acquisitions that will underpin the Abuja–London route, as well as planned services to Houston and New York.
With the St Kitts success logged, Air Peace’s resounding theme rings clear: “Nigeria to the world—no stops, no limits.” The Abuja–St Kitts flight is more than a one-off achievement; it is another proof-point in Air Peace’s steady bid to transform itself from a regional champion into a global contender, carried aloft on the wings of Africa’s most populous nation.
