Education is Canada’s strategic middle-power advantage
As Prime Minister Mark Carney champions a renewed vision of middle-power diplomacy, a new approach is needed. Traditional tools remain vital: trade agreements, capital flows, and supply chain resilience. However, in an AI-driven economy, they are no longer decisive on their own.
The real determinant of long-term, mutually beneficial economic alignment is human capital. This is one of Canada’s most strategic assets, yet it remains significantly under-leveraged.
David Hornsby, professor of international affairs and vice-provost of academic and global learning at Carleton University, recently described educational partnerships as “models and contributors of load-bearing institutional architecture” of a co-operative global order. Educational partnerships have something that is lacking in other political spheres: long-term trust and institutional relationships that compound over decades.
In an AI-driven world, access to skilled talent—technically capable, creative, collaborative, and emotionally intelligent—is essential for economic competition. Here in Canada, 70 per cent of businesses cite a shortage of skilled workers as a major barrier to success. For Canadian companies looking to expand into emerging markets, long-term success will depend not only on market access, but also on talent acquisition in those markets. Forging institutional relationships with academic institutions in these markets develops global talent in line with Canadian economic priorities and opens opportunities for Canadian businesses abroad.
This country is already taking steps towards nurturing these new types of partnerships, as evidenced by the meeting earlier this month with Foreign Minister Anita Anand, International Development Secretary of State Randeep Sarai, and Wamkele Mene, the secretary general for the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat.
This is smart given that Africa’s youth will be the engine of the global economy. Today, Africa is adding as many working-age adults to its population as the rest of the world. By 2050, Africa will account for 85 per cent of the growth in the global working population. While this population will decline in the rest of the world, Africa’s will continue to grow. Businesses will increasingly look to recruit for their workforces here in the long term, provided the right talent with the right skills can be found. This will only be possible with strong institutional partnerships and a modern, agile, responsive education system. It is incumbent on Canada to invest in this future workforce today to secure its future prosperity.
Already, the seeds of this new type of middle-power diplomacy, focused on nurturing the workforce of the future, are starting to shape. One example is the BRIDGE-SA initiative, led by Engineers Without Borders Canada in partnership with the University of Johannesburg, the Umlambo Foundation, and Elysium Innovation. The initiative seeks to strengthen academic partnerships and economic expansion between Canada and South Africa by transforming education and employment pathways. BRIDGE-SA implements a peer-to-peer engineering education model that combines AI-fueled project learning and industry-linked applied problem-solving to help students build practical workforce experience. Canadian and South African students, educators, and employers collaborate to build future-fit talent for both countries.
Unlike traditional education or capacity-building initiatives, BRIDGE-SA leverages Elysium's human-centric technology that supersedes traditional learning management systems. Where traditional education models are lecture-based, and credential-focused, Elysium provides a dynamic, project-based and outcomes-oriented model that uses the power of AI to adapt learning to meet students where they are at. This approach reflects a broader shift in workforce capability assessment. Structured, team-based learning environments allow students to collaborate across borders to improve problem-solving and critical thinking.
For Canadian firms, harnessing models like BRIDGE-SA will create a more efficient pathway to identify and develop talent in both South Africa and Canada, reducing onboarding costs, supporting long-term growth, and diversifying economic opportunity. For Canadian students, these partnerships bring opportunities for cross-cultural peer-to-peer learning that build cross-cultural leadership capabilities that expand beyond borders: critical thinking, communication and collaboration. Skills that Canadian employers seek.
In practice, supporting education skills development reflects an important dimension of this country’s middle-power advantage. Canada’s strength lies not only in exporting capital or technology, but also in leveraging our engineering expertise and educational soft power to build the human infrastructure necessary for domestic productivity and long-term international growth.
As Ottawa modernizes its Africa relations via the Canada Africa Strategy, education and engineering collaboration should be understood as strategic economic infrastructure for mutual economic partnership and sustainable development. In an increasingly AI-driven global economy, the countries that shape talent ecosystems will shape the markets of the future.
David Boroto is CEO of Engineers Without Borders Canada. Michael Sheldrick is co-founder at Global Citizen, and author of From Ideas to Impact. Amit Hooda is founder and CEO of Elysium Innovation.
The Hill Times