Canada risks falling behind with tepid approach to African trade: South Africa envoy

Ottawa’s tepid approach to expanding trade in Africa risks seeing Canada fall behind its peers in building commerce on the continent, warns South Africa’s envoy.

High Commissioner Rieaz Shaik said Ottawa still views African countries as recipients of aid and security assistance, despite an Africa strategy pushing for Canada to treat the continent as a series of dynamic markets set for high growth.

“My criticism of Canada would be that it hasn’t seriously made the transition,” he told The Canadian Press.

“With all second-movers in any market, you run the risk of not getting into the market — or the market becomes saturated.”

Advocates for more engagement in Africa say China, the United Arab Emirates and some other western countries have formed closer ties on the continent that could pay off for decades.

The Senate foreign affairs committee echoed that view in a report last December, arguing Canada should staff up the foreign service to expand African trade in sectors beyond mining.

Shaik said he is working to get Canada to sign a strategic partnership agreement with South Africa to commit to working more deeply in five sectors — agribusiness, infrastructure, mining, energy and advanced technologies. It would be anchored in a foreign investment promotion and protection agreement, a pact that puts legally binding rules in place to protect, promote and expand foreign investment between two countries.

“The objective is to reset the relationship between Canada and South Africa,” Shaik said.

Canada last signed an investment pact with South Africa in 1997, and the two countries have been working for several years to upgrade that deal.

Shaik says the talks hinge on investor-dispute tribunals: Canada wants an international resolution mechanism but South Africa’s constitution requires domestic courts to resolve issues.

“It is more an issue of sequencing rather than issue of substance that divides us,” Shaik said.

The new partnership would have South Africa as Canada’s springboard into other southern African countries and eventually the African Continental Free Trade Area, which spans most of the continent, he said. For South Africa, Canada would be the entry point to doing more business in the U.S., Mexico and Latin America.

“We are both, in our own rights, relatively small markets. But based in our regions, we become significant markets,” he said.

Shaik said three Canadian firms already operating in South Africa — grain giant AGT Foods, potato company McCain and engineering firm Hatch — could all expand across the continent, if given market access and the right supports.

He said Ottawa needs to decide whether it wants to set terms for more trade with Africa and move early, or wait for more consumer bases and trade routes to emerge while Canada focuses on Europe, China and India.

“I think reality will force it — will force the African continental market into Canada. The only question then is whether Canada would be a first-mover,” he said. “It may be strategic for Canada to say that it wants to be a second-mover into the market and let that market be developed by China, by others.”

Shaik said South Africa is serious about expanding trade with Canada, and he repeated past praise for Alberta and particularly Saskatchewan for creating “ecosystems” for industry development.

A newly launched Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) train traveling from Johannesburg to Naledi in Soweto, South Africa, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

In July, South Africa’s deputy foreign minister brought a delegation to learn how Saskatchewan has melded technological research in agriculture with business partners and trade strategies, to maximize crop exports. They found similar moves by Alberta’s Olds College.

“Our delegation was really impressed about how outward-going both Alberta and Saskatchewan are, in attracting market interest,” Shaik said.

He said his country is also studying how Nova Scotia has digitized health and drug records.

A street performer asks motorists for money at an intersection in Soweto, South Africa, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

Shaik argued Canadians would benefit from learning from African technology advancements, such as shifting small payments from cash to mobile apps and using bank branches to provide government services and to verify identification, such as in processing immigration paperwork.

Canadian artificial intelligence leaders could pilot programs in Africa as they seek to commercialize uses, he said, instead of relying on American capital and scale. 

“One of the fundamental weaknesses of the Canadian AI industry is that while it develops the intellectual property, to reach scale it has to go to the U.S.,” he said.

Overall, Shaik says Carney’s aim of doubling non-U.S. exports in the next decade will require Ottawa to convince the corporate sector to look beyond Washington.

“You have to move Canadian society, and especially the elites in Canada in the financial world. Because what we may be dealing with in Canada is the boiling-frog scenario,” he said.

“Even though the water is getting hotter, it’s comfortable; what we have at the moment.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 22, 2026.

By Dylan Robertson | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.