Senator Gerba: African markets can help break Canada’s dependence on the U.S.

As the Canada–U.S. tariff dispute escalated in early 2025, Senator Amina Gerba made the case that Canada’s exposure to a single customer had become a strategic risk. Her op-ed, first published in the Montreal Gazette on March 18, 2025, was republished by the Senate’s SenCAplus magazine on May 1, 2025.

Her starting point is arithmetic: she writes that more than 75% of Canada’s worldwide exports tie the country to one customer. Her conclusion is direct.

Why Africa, and why now

Senator Gerba points to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which she describes as a single market of 54 countries and more than 1.3 billion people, projected to grow to 2.4 billion within 20 years. She argues the agreement will boost intra-African trade and foreign direct investment, and that Canada should step up its financial and trade relations with African countries in line with the then newly released Africa Strategy.

Two G7 models

Rather than inventing from scratch, she suggests Canada learn from fellow G7 members:

• Japan, which has hosted the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) since 1993 as a platform connecting Japanese business with African nations.
• Italy, whose Mattei Plan includes a fund for African growth and resilience, a joint investment with the African Development Bank with a five-year budget of €400 million (almost $625 million) targeting food security, SME development and sustainable infrastructure.

Why it matters for the CACT community

The op-ed reframes Africa from an aid file to a diversification file — the same shift the federal strategy claims to make. For diaspora entrepreneurs who already move goods and services between Canada and African markets, the Japanese and Italian examples are a useful benchmark: both pair political convening with a financing instrument. That combination is precisely what Senator Gerba would keep asking Ottawa for in committee over the following year.