On Saturday night I sat down to read Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address to Canadians on the trade negotiations with the United States. Why would I? After all, I am not Canadian. But my two brothers and many of my favorite people in the world are.
You see, I spent my most formative years in Waterloo, Ontario, and it is the only national anthem apart from (both of) Nigeria’s I can sing by heart. This is why something about the framing of what Canada must do now deeply bothers me. We are still talking about things – oil, maple syrup, alcohol, softwood, etc.
The reality is Canada’s greatest export to America is not alcohol, energy or maple syrup or whatever else there is to fight about this time. It is people — talented builders formed by decades of deep Canadian social investment in knowledge and research.
I am the number one testimony of Canada’s knowledge society.
I arrived in Canada in 2008 as a complete greenhorn. In fact, it was the first time I ever left my country. By the time I took off from Pearson International in 2013 to go home, I had started, failed and sold for a pittance my first startup, Bookneto. I had run a 30,000 weekly circulation paper with a million dollar budget. I had a network of amazing smart young people who would go on to build billion dollar companies and I had the seeds of what would be required to go on to build three of Africa’s ten unicorns from Lagos, Nigeria within a decade.
Waterloo did not teach me entrepreneurship as theory. It taught me to build. It handed me the practical experience, networks, knowledge and confidence to become one. Through co-operative education that put me in a real job before I had a degree, the Velocity incubator that gave a student with an idea a room and a reason to build, a policy that let me keep my own intellectual property instead of surrendering it to the institution, grants and pizza to fuel the discovery, and a little angel funding from the Golden Triangle Angel Network and other Canadian angel investors.
The truth is Canada is the world’s best factory for true builders.
Unfortunately, the sad reality is the value of everything I was taught to build in Canada crystalized value in Delaware, not Toronto. Canada should be asking itself why.
And its not just me.
AI was born in Canada through Prof Hinton’s publicly funded deep learning research through several years when no one would touch it. The world got the transformer economy. Silicon Valley got the trillion dollar market capitalization. Canada got a footnote and a satellite office in Toronto.
Across Silicon Valley, Lagos, Nairobi and Bangalore, several Canadian trained builders have the same story of how Canada taught us to build but American backed us and took the credit. Grateful as we are to Canada, we wish we could do more than just say thank you.
In the end Canada must confront the reality that its real trade deficit with America is not in steel, energy, dairy, maple syrup or softwood. It is talent.
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So here is what I want Ottawa to hear as it hosts the world in Toronto for its investment summit this September.
Canada is one of very few countries on earth that can send knowledge and talent abroad without anyone suspecting it of empire. Neither Washington nor Beijing can say that. It is the whole basis of Canadian middle power status, and it is sitting unused.
It is time to strategically deploy it.
Send Canadian research capacity, teaching capacity and talent into Africa, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America — on Canadian terms, with Canadian equity, and with Canadian institutions building alongside the diverse talent you have already welcomed onto your shores.
Now here is the rub.
The state cannot lead this effort.
Ottawa must stand behind the Canadian institutions already doing the work; foundations like Mastercard Foundation, organizations like Engineers without Borders and its incredible Universities which are a safe haven for open knowledge and research and a magnet for talent from all over the world so that it can teach the world to build – adapting and scaling what is already proven, alongside the builders of the global south. Not as aid. Not as charity but as a major thrust of its trade and foreign policy.
O Canada, for decades you have unwittingly refined and fed the world’s finest talent into the US. It is time you start sending that talent to the rest of us.
Stay True.
Stay North.
Stay Free.
Your brother in Christ,
Iyin Aboyeji
Editor’s note: This opinion piece was first published in GOOD SEED, a LinkedIn newsletter by Iyin Aboyeji on his journey of faith-driven investing in an African future where prosperity and purpose are within everyone’s reach. It is republished by TechMedia Africa to reach our readers, including startup founders and entrepreneurs who may find its insights valuable.