As I said earlier, it appears from our statistics that the approval rate for applications from French-speaking African countries submitted in Quebec is similar to that for applications submitted in other Canadian provinces. That said, I'd like to give you three reasons why applications from African applicants are more often refused than others.
The first reason is the frequency of fraud in acceptance letters from Canadian educational institutions and in bank documents sent. Obviously, we have no tolerance for fraud.
The second reason is the difficulty of knowing whether students are acting in good faith, meaning whether they are really going to study in Canada. Sometimes students applying for a study permit don't want to study in Canada, but rather do something else. When this is detected by our visa officers, the application is refused.
To illustrate my point, I can tell you that we conducted a study in collaboration with the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières to understand the situation of certain Algerian students. We realized that, of all the Algerian students attending this university and to whom we had granted a study permit, only 20% had registered for courses in the September academic session. The remaining 80% had not done what they were supposed to. This is one of the reasons for the refusals.
The third and final main reason why applicants are most often turned down is funding. Studying in Canada is a costly endeavour. It's expensive for foreign students to study in Canada, with tuition fees higher than those charged to Canadian citizens, not to mention housing costs.
These are the three main reasons for refusal.