Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 9th, 2025

[Elise Legault]

Yes, absolutely.

We were talking about Canadian mining companies. Countries such as Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo want to develop their mineral resources, but they also want to add value and create good jobs on the continent. So we must not focus solely on extracting resources and simply tolerate human rights abuses. We have to do it the right way.

That said, however, there is a way to integrate trade and development to some extent. This does not mean that we should only seek to increase Canadian exports. It also means that we must promote economic development in African countries, as well as local added value.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Ms. Higgins, you represent several organizations. There are small international aid organizations. Here in Alma, in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, there is the Centre de solidarité internationale, which carries out very concrete projects that really improve things. This organization is finding it increasingly difficult to obtain funding from the federal government because the funding tends to go to large organizations.

I was wondering if you have any thoughts on that since these small organizations have a role to play in this whole debate.

[Kate Higgins]

That's a really important point you've raised. As Mr. Brown said,

we're “consistently inconsistent”.

I think that if there is one community that is not like that, it is civil society organizations. Take the Quebec organizations that have long-standing partnerships with other organizations in Africa, in the francophonie, for example, for francophones in the east and west. I think that's really important.

We need a strategy. We have talked with representatives from other countries who are really invested in relations with the African continent. I think that NGOs, like the organization you mentioned, have really good long-term relationships. For me, that's very important.

That's the work we do at Cooperation Canada. We seek to develop relationships with Global Affairs Canada to ensure that small and large organizations can not only access government funding, but also have access to other partnerships. It's very important to note that NGOs have partnerships and relationships with other entities, not just the government.

I think that if we want to invest in our long-term relationships with Africa, it really has to be through NGOs, which play a very important role for us as a country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to MP Holman next.

You have five minutes.

[Kurt Holman, Conservative, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses today.

First of all, my questions are regarding trade and investment. My question is for Ms. Nwuneli.

You mentioned in your introduction that there's currently no free trade agreement between Canada and the African countries.

There is currently in discussion the African continental free trade area, AfCFTA, a flagship initiative of the African Union's “Agenda 2063”. Canada's Africa strategy notes, “Once fully implemented, [it] will be the [world's] largest free trade area...by number of participating countries, creating an integrated market of 1.3 billion people.”

I was wondering if you could share with us the status of the AfCFTA implementation. Thank you.

[Ndidi Nwuneli]

Thank you so much.

I would say that the AfCFTA has focused significantly on protocols and agreements: first, easing some of the barriers to trade within the continent, then developing those protocols and agreements within regions on the continent and now with other regions outside the continent.

Unfortunately, the pace has not been as fast as I would have wanted, personally. I'm speaking in my personal capacity as a former serial entrepreneur and someone who has worked across the entire continent, but we are seeing a lot of promising signs.

Number one, I think we're seeing a lot of promising signs when it comes to protocols that have been developed on trade with agriculture, produce and food. We're seeing promising protocols when it comes to manufacturing and trade in manufacturing, and a tremendous appetite and interest in trade for critical minerals and support for energy access.

I want to tie that to say that, beyond the AfCFTA, we also have some very credible partners. AFC, the Africa Finance Corporation, is leading the phenomenal work between three countries when it comes to critical minerals. Some of you have heard of the Lobito corridor. I was just in Norway. To see the Nordic interest in the Lobito corridor was phenomenal. To see the U.S. interest in that corridor is also quite noteworthy.

In addition, we have the Africa Access Bank, which is another formidable player that has reduced a lot of the barriers to financing trade on the continent. It's a very ready partner for Canada.

We have the African Development Bank. I mentioned in my submission the African Development Fund, which is committed to infrastructure development to ease trade between Africa and the rest of the world and within Africa under its new leader, Dr. Sidi Ould Tah.

We are seeing so many promising signs. I want to assure you that, in a lot of ways, AfCFTA is just one of the many platforms that have been unlocked on the continent, and it's important to recognize that there are so many other partners that are eager to engage with Canada in addition to AfCFTA.

I'll ask Elise to chime in if she has anything else to add.

[Elise Legault]

I think that's great. Thanks.

[Kurt Holman, Conservative, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

It's interesting that you brought up critical minerals. My second question is, what steps could the Government of Canada take to further enable or encourage responsible Canadian investment in Africa's critical minerals sector, consistent with the objectives set out in the Africa strategy?

[Ndidi Nwuneli]

I can take that first. I'm sure others will chime in.

I think there are three steps.

Number one is that we must increase the transparency and accountability of our investments in critical minerals. Civil society has a critical role to play here to ensure that we are following standards when it comes to gender, youth, equity, justice, fair pay, investment in the continent and value addition on the critical minerals, along with the insistence that where Canadian companies come alongside African investors, they also pay credible livable wages, provide all the social protections to the employees and prioritize African employees in value addition on the continent. We've noticed that oftentimes—I wouldn't call out other countries—there's not a level playing field. I think Canadian values are so powerful, and those values should follow Canadian investment in Africa.

The second one is the critical role for investment that is affordable. We've talked about the cost of capital. I talked about FinDev Canada. We need to see more Canadian institutions and pension funds coming alongside private investment to ensure that patient capital is available to investors who are committing to value addition on the continent.

Finally, there is knowledge transfer. I think Canada has so much great experience in critical minerals. Your gold industry is so well advanced. Your critical minerals industry in Canada is so well developed. That knowledge transfer is a gift that Canada can give to many African countries.

I'll pass it on to Elise, in case she has anything else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

We're out of time, unfortunately.

We'll go next to MP Bill Blair.

You have five minutes.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

If I may, I'm going to defer my time to my colleague, Mr. Oliphant.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I don't get to be a witness, but I get to talk some more.

I wanted to talk about competition on the continent.

First, Canada is supporting the African continental free trade area through its work in Ghana and is trying to look at some of the issues of exchange, money and internal barriers that are stopping trade. One of our goals is to increase internal continental trade.

We also want to increase development. There is a strong sense that you need energy before you can have development. Obviously, all of the work on poverty reduction, education and health care needs to continue. If you're going to have people not need development assistance, then they need jobs. If you're going to have jobs, then you need capacity. Part of that is infrastructure. Part of it is energy.

China is well known. China has 1.4 billion people, by the way. We have 40 million people. We will not necessarily be able to compete with China on everything, but we can do what we're good at doing.

I would offer that on energy, we have particular things we're good at. We have a “towards sustainable mining” program, TSM, with the Mining Association of Canada, which puts Canada on the map as being if not the most, then one of the most environmentally, labour and socially just mining sectors in the world. We have energy, with renewables, nuclear and fossil fuel energy capacity. We have agri-food and processing, which could help develop the region, so that Africa wouldn't only feed itself but could feed the world.

My thought on this is that energy is critical. Do you have any thoughts on how Canada could do that, so that we can alleviate poverty by creating employment, particularly for youth, with the largest youth population in the world?

[Elise Legault]

Sure. Maybe Mr. Roberts will have something to add on this energy question.

I'm glad to hear you raise it, because that's one of the recommendations we have in the document that we shared here.

When there are surveys of businesses on the continent that ask what the biggest barriers are to actually creating businesses and creating jobs, two things always come out on top. One is the cost of capital, which Ndidi was mentioning. It's the fact that it's too expensive to borrow money to invest on the continent because of, often, unfair credit ratings and so forth. The second is a lack of access to reliable electricity. These are the two things that consistently come out on top. That's why there's a very significant movement or initiative going back to the question of energy and electricity access on the continent.

I don't know if you've heard about mission 300. It is the World Bank and African Development Bank initiative to provide electricity to 300 million people on the continent. On the continent, there are still 600 million people who don't have access to electricity. That's a very promising initiative.

I'm very much hoping this is something Canada can support. Canada can support that through its contribution to the African Development Fund with the replenishment next week. Also, there is potential for actual bilateral, Canada-Africa partnerships around electricity and energy access, because we do have the expertise across many different types of energy.

I was pleased to see this mentioned during the Prime Minister's trip to South Africa for the G20. That's promising, but there is more. Is that where we could have more forward-looking, mutually beneficial bilateral partnerships between Canada and African countries? I think energy and electricity access has tremendous potential.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Perhaps Professor Roberts could add to that.

Do you want to add anything on the electricity and energy issue? They're combined.

[Chris W. J. Roberts]

As I mentioned in my opening statement, energy is critical. Energy poverty in Africa is the biggest drawback and the biggest obstacle to development, period. There are lots of other issues. However, regarding the lack of energy, the institutional infrastructure for energy and the physical infrastructure for energy—electricity particularly and other forms of energy—yes, Canada has a major role to play in that.

If we could give the Trump administration credit for anything—and I certainly don't usually do that—maybe one thing would be for changing the narrative about the west's approach to energy development in Africa. Many African countries have domestic sources of energy that are underused: coal—which is, again, not my favourite—natural gas and oil, as well as renewables like geothermal, hydro, etc.

For a long time, almost a decade, gradually, the international restrictions on investment, not only through western countries bilaterally but also through some of the IFIs, were that we will invest in renewables but will not invest in fossil fuels, yet Canada increases its fossil fuel exports every year. The United States has done it. In Norway, for all of its success, its sovereign wealth fund has been dependent on fossil fuel exports, yet we restricted it for a long time. That increased the cost of capital for Africa or for any companies doing business in Africa to develop fossil fuels in Africa that could be used for generating both domestic energy and export earnings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Thank you very much. That concludes this round.

Thank you so much to the witnesses for appearing and for your incredibly important testimony before the committee.

We will now briefly suspend the meeting so that we can go into the in camera format.

[Proceedings continue in camera]