JOHANNESBURG — Prime Minister Mark Carney is in South Africa for a G20 summit overshadowed by a U.S. boycott — and as critics of Canada’s Africa strategy closely watch Carney’s first trip to the region as prime minister.
“There’s a great synergy and opportunity for us to collaborate on core challenges that affect us all,” said Carleton University professor David Hornsby, who specializes in South Africa and Canadian policies on Africa.
“The time is right for us to re-engage in significant ways.”
The Johannesburg gathering — the first G20 summit on the African continent — comes almost a year after the group officially admitted the African Union as a full member, similar to the European Union.
Canada has listed five priorities for the summit: improving critical mineral supply chains, using AI for sustainable development, preventing wildfires and natural disasters, reforming development funding and debt, and advancing gender equality through economic growth.
That last priority recalls the Trudeau government’s feminist foreign policy, which included economic growth but placed a more public focus on sexual health and gender-based violence.
This is Carney’s first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as prime minister. He briefly visited Egypt last month for a summit on U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace deal for Gaza.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is chairing the G20 summit and has put a major focus on rising global inequality.
He had a report commissioned that found economic polarization within and between countries is generating resentment that chips away at political cohesion, risking instability, violence and autocracy.
Ramaphosa has also outlined his own priorities for the summit, all of which align with themes Ottawa raised this year at the G7.
They include disaster resilience, debt sustainability for low-income countries, financing for a “just energy transition” and using critical minerals to drive inclusive growth.
G20 leaders will meet Saturday and Sunday and Carney will have one-on-one meetings with his counterparts between group sessions.
Senior officials, who briefed reporters travelling with Carney, said the prime minister will meet with the leaders of France, Germany, Norway and the U.K., and most likely with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Carney also will take part in a discussion on ways the European Union can engage with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a Pacific Rim trading bloc of which Canada is a part.
Carney arrived in Johannesburg just after Canadian officials in South Africa announced Ottawa would for the first time ever cut back its support for the Global Fund, a major health organization that tackles infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV.
Trump is sending no senior American officials to South Africa, a country he accuses of enabling anti-white violence. South Africa says Trump’s claims do not reflect crime statistics or reality.
Trump is set to host the next G20 meeting in December 2026 in Miami.
The leaders of Russia, China, Mexico and Argentina are also not attending this summit — making for the largest number of no-shows of any G20 summit, said G20 Research Group head John Kirton.
“Without Trump at the table to dominate the private discussions with his personal views on unpredictable, particular subjects, the private discussions could be more focused, detailed and consensus creating than they would otherwise be,” Kirton, whose group is based at the University of Toronto, wrote in a Nov. 15 analysis.
“But far more importantly, with so many key leaders absent — and thus unable to add their personal perspectives or national subjects to the deliberations and any outcome documents — the deliberations are likely to be smaller and less comprehensive.”
Despite these absences, Carney can still make progress on economic deals with important partners, said Janice Stein, founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
“This is a no-brainer for the prime minister,” Stein said, noting that he has experience at such summits as a former UN envoy and central banker.
“He has interacted (with and) knows all these leaders. And so there is an actual advantage that he brings to this.”
Carney’s visit comes as many are asking pointed questions about Canada’s Africa strategy. The strategy, released by the previous government of Justin Trudeau, seeks to go beyond viewing the continent as an aid recipient by preparing Canadian companies to profit from Africa’s young population and booming economies.
But the Trudeau Liberals released the strategy after years of delays and just days before calling an election. Ottawa allocated no new funds to the strategy, while it set aside $2.3 billion for the 2022 Indo-Pacific strategy.
Canada’s special envoy for Africa Ben Marc Diendéré said on Oct. 30 that the strategy is hindered not just by the lack of clear funding but by the government’s own priorities.
“I had to fight to get people to say the word ‘Africa.’ That is troubling,” he told the Senate foreign affairs committee.
“I am going to be very honest with you. At the moment, we are limited.”
The new federal budget identified Ottawa’s priority markets for trade in Europe and Asia — not Africa, where Canada is helping to establish a free-trade zone across the continent.
In his testimony, Diendéré warned Canada is falling behind both peers and adversaries such as China on advancing diplomatic and economic interests on the continent.
“Either we decide to do business in Africa or we don’t,” he said.
Hornsby said there is “a really significant gap of knowledge” at Global Affairs Canada over how needs and opportunities vary among the continent’s 54 countries.
“There’s been a lot more going on from a diplomatic engagement perspective, trying to learn from African countries about what it is that they need and want, and how they want to engage and seeing how that aligns with Canadian interests,” he said.
“We have not, traditionally, gone to our African partners and said, ‘What makes sense to you?’ We’ve traditionally gone and said ‘Well, these are our priorities.'”
Hornsby said Canada should return to the role it played from the late 1950s to the 1990s, when it was a key player in helping African countries establish constitutions and build economies after becoming independent states. Canada subsequently shifted to an intense focus on aid instead of trade.
Hornsby suggested “not necessarily dialing back on the developmental elements, but ramping up the political and the trade dimensions,” particularly in efforts to get industries other than mining to invest in the continent.
Others have been much more critical of the government’s approach to the continent.
In analysis last week, the Canadian Centre for African Affairs and Policy Research accused the government of being “evasive” on why the Africa strategy has no clear implementation plan or dedicated budget.
“Africa is absent from Canada’s trade-diversification map — not because it lacks opportunity, but because Ottawa has not yet decided to treat it as strategic,” the group wrote, adding that given the tariff pressure Canada is under, “there is no scenario in which Africa is optional.”
South Africa’s High Commissioner in Ottawa Rieaz Shaik said his country engages in much collaboration with Canada on scientific research and green technology.
He revealed this week that both countries are in talks on an agreement to boost bilateral trade and investment in specific sectors.
Shaik said South Africans think fondly of Canadians because of their “tremendous assistance” in undermining the white-supremacist apartheid regime and helping South Africa write its pluralistic constitution.
He said that same thinking will guide Johannesburg’s approach to the G20 summit.
“We know consensus-making, because we built a new constitution on consensus. We ended apartheid on consensus — and we learned all of that from Canada,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 21, 2025.
Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
