Prime Minister Mark Carney talks with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa as they take part in the family photo during the G20 Summit in Johannesburg in November, 2025.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
When they saw Prime Minister Mark Carney galvanizing a Davos audience by imagining a new world order of united middle powers, many South Africans were eager to enlist in his coalition.
Canada and South Africa seem like natural allies. Both are resource-rich middle powers. Both are racing to seek new trading partners and diversify their overseas markets, to protect themselves from the wrath and tariffs of U.S. President Donald Trump.
But the potential, so far, is largely unrealized. South Africa remains low on Mr. Carney’s priority list. The South African government, for its part, has done little to exploit the possibilities of the Canadian market. The story of their unfulfilled trade is a cautionary tale about the limits of the middle-power rhetoric.
The goodwill is indisputably there. South African politicians and commentators have been quoting Mr. Carney’s speech ever since he delivered it at Davos last month, especially its signature line: “Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” Many have endorsed his vision of a middle-power partnership.
South Africa, a self-described ‘moral superpower,’ rethinks its foreign policy
Top officials from the two countries forged close relations as they sat together at countless meetings last year to co-ordinate agendas for the Group of Seven, where Canada held the presidency, and the G20, which South Africa led. President Cyril Ramaphosa flew to Canada for the G7 summit, and Mr. Carney trekked to Johannesburg for the G20.
Promises have been plentiful. Ottawa introduced a new Africa Strategy last March, pledging to boost trade with the continent. Canada and South Africa were planning “an ambitious economic agenda,” according to Cheryl Urban, an assistant deputy minister at Global Affairs Canada, in testimony to a House of Commons committee in November.
Since then, South Africa has boosted its trade attractiveness with an uptick in its economic growth. Its electricity shortages have ended, and its currency has strengthened to three-year highs. It portrays itself as the gateway to the much larger African market, with a new continental trade agreement expected to reduce barriers.
After a year of meetings between Canadian and South African officials, however, few trade initiatives have emerged. Behind the optimistic rhetoric, the handful of announcements have been skimpy.
“We haven’t seen Canada’s specific efforts, beyond the high-level talk we have shared with leaders about the need to deepen trade,” said Wandile Sihlobo, an agricultural economist who sits on Mr. Ramaphosa’s economic advisory council.
South Africa, he said, sees Canada as a “key potential trading partner” in the Americas, especially in the agricultural sector, and is pushing for progress this year in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s decision to hit South Africa with a 30-per-cent tariff.
“Still, we haven’t made material progress on engaging Canada about the prospects of a trade deal,” he told The Globe and Mail. “We hope this year Canada can actively engage South Africa and be specific about its interests.”
After meeting Mr. Ramaphosa on the margins of the G20 in November, Mr. Carney announced only a small handful of initiatives.
He disclosed that the two countries had agreed to launch talks on a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA). But an investment deal is likely to take years to negotiate, analysts say. South Africa has been reluctant to sign such treaties over the past decade, preferring to offer a generic set of legislated protections for investors from all countries.
Mr. Carney also announced that South Africa would lead a trade mission to Canada. It later emerged, however, that the trade mission would be a farm industry delegation to an agricultural machinery trade show in Saskatchewan. There is no sign of a broader trade mission with visits to the capitals of either country.
In a third announcement, Mr. Carney promised the opening of a Cape Town office of FinDev Canada, the government’s development finance institution. But in its Africa Strategy last year, Ottawa had said the FinDev office would open by the end of 2025. The delay is unexplained. A spokesperson for FinDev Canada said there is no confirmed date for the opening of the office yet, although it is expected some time this year. Nor will the office focus solely on South Africa – it will handle projects across the entire African continent.
“Despite last year’s Africa Strategy. I see little evidence of serious, sustained, high-level engagement with African partners to foster a more comprehensive and strategic policy approach,” said David Black, a Dalhousie University professor who studies Canada-Africa relations.
“Any diversification and middle power coalition-building project should encompass Africa, and South Africa is the obvious place to start,” he told The Globe.
Business groups say they see a definite rise in trade interest among companies in both countries. The two governments, however, have mainly pursued other markets, including China and Europe.
“At present, there is no strong public indication of active, formal negotiations, unlike Canada’s engagements with other regions,” said Greg Nott, a Johannesburg lawyer who chairs the Southern Africa-Canada Chamber of Commerce.
The political rhetoric about potential trade is slowly turning into commercial conversations, but the increased engagement is still modest, and largely at the exploratory level, Mr. Nott told The Globe.
The South African mission to Saskatchewan is too narrow and should have included a broader trade mission to Ottawa and Toronto, he said. “If you don’t go where capital and decision-makers are, you miss half the opportunity.”
Trade numbers expose the lack of momentum. Canada has boosted its imports from South Africa over the past two decades – mainly in the mining sector – but its exports to the country have remained stagnant. It exported $583-million in goods to South Africa in 2024, roughly the same as it did in 2006 and less than it did in 2008. This was just 0.1 per cent of Canada’s global exports in 2024, according to Statistics Canada.
The unfulfilled potential in South Africa is part of a larger neglect of the broader African market. A Senate committee reported in December that Africa accounted for barely 1 per cent of Canada’s total merchandise trade in 2024. Canada’s trade volume with Africa falls “well below” that of other G7 countries, the report said.
When talking to journalists, Mr. Carney has repeatedly insisted that Africa is one of the regions where he aims to expand trade relations. But in his Davos speech, when listing his trade deals around the world, he made no mention of Africa.
At a news conference in Johannesburg during the G20 summit, he said he decided to focus first on other regions of the world where potential returns are higher than in Africa. “That’s because we have a responsibility to have that highest return,” he said.
In his talks with South Africa’s President, Mr. Carney emphasized “Canada’s strengths in clean and conventional energy and emerging technologies,” according to a readout by his office. But fast-growing South African sectors such as solar energy are already dominated by Chinese and European companies, with Canada struggling to catch up.
South African companies, for their part, have been slow to exploit the Canadian market, despite the rising level of interest on both sides as companies seek to diversify away from the U.S. market.
South Africa might be underestimating the value of Canada as a potential strategic partner – a country that shares its commitment to rules-based trade, Mr. Nott said.
“The opportunity now,” he said, “is to move from shared values and potential to execution, speed and scale.”