I’d like to acknowledge at the outset the traditional custodians of the lands on which we’re meeting, the Whadjuk Noongar people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.
I’d like to thank the organisers for putting this event together, my parliamentary colleagues who are here today, and the government leaders from African nations who have travelled here.
This event is a timely reminder of the links that exist, that have long existed, between Australia and Africa.
From the sea-borne trading networks that at one point linked the Kilwa Sultanate, in Tanzania, with the Yolngu peoples in the north of this country.
To the twelve Africans who came to Sydney aboard the First Fleet, in 1788.
From the African prospectors who came to Victoria in the 1850s, in the rush for gold.
To the Mauritian sugar workers who, in the 1860s, helped to establish the cane industry in Queensland.
Today, our links are stronger still.
The near-half a million people of African descent who call Australia home, people from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Kenya, Mauritius, and more, enrich our cultural and communal life.
Sparking new ideas, sharing unique skills and traditions, making our society more open, more creative, stronger, and more prosperous.
And their ties, of kith and kin, exist among the commercial ties we share, including the 170 Australian companies working across African nations, in a broad range of sectors.
With investments of over $60 billion, these companies are helping to provide jobs, training, expertise, and opportunities to local communities across Africa.
While also growing the two-way trade and investment between us.
These links are all important. And it’s encouraging that, as I can see from this event, we are increasing them.
Because these links, and our decisions and our co-operation, are going to be key to the future.
Right now, Africa is poised for significant growth: in its population, in its economies, in its development.
Its role in the world is shifting fast, whether that be as a partner of trade, investment, development or peace and security.
But keenest of all is Africa’s coming role in the global transition to clean energy.
We know that manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric vehicles is heavily reliant on critical minerals like cobalt, lithium, graphite, and rare earths.
And, as the demand for those minerals begins to soar, the need to develop the critical minerals reserves with which Australia and African nations are endowed is going to be acute.
How we do so, how we develop and extract those minerals, is going to require us to be partners.
Because it will not be enough to dig these minerals out of the ground.
It is crucial that our critical minerals reserves are developed in a way that is responsible, that is environmentally conscious, that delivers prosperity and stability to the nations that own those reserves.
Australia is well positioned on all these fronts.
Our mining expertise, our leadership in sustainable mining, and our strong mining equipment, technology, and services capability, is widely acknowledged and makes us an obvious partner.
But there is another important part of this: the energy transition that the world needs will not be reliant only on what we extract.
It will also rely on the systems that exist to make it possible.
We will need the open markets that allow investment to flow across oceans, enable new projects to succeed, that encourage innovation and creativity.
We will need supply chains that can withstand shocks and disruptions, that are diversified, that support processing and value-addition in our own economies, and can develop new partnerships, for mutual benefit.
And we will need the rules and institutions that have helped drive global prosperity for decades, and which give countries and companies and communities the confidence to act in good faith with one another.
These are systems that we will all benefit from Australia and African nations.
And it’s why the Albanese Labor Government is championing free and open trade at a time when it’s most under attack.
It’s why Australia is investing in diversifying supply chains, creating more pathways and nurturing new partnerships.
And it’s why we continue to support the things that work in the rules-based trading system, why we’re pressing to fix the things that don’t work, and to address the issues that are causing concern.
Earlier this year, for this exact reason, advocating for changes to WTO rules around digital trade, I went to Cameroon and South Africa.
It was my third trip to Africa in less than twelve months.
And not only did we get those changes up, I got the chance to see the difference that Australia’s partnerships in Africa are already having, for myself.
It was most palpable at a school I visited, about 50km beyond Johannesburg.
Masibambane College is a big school.
It has over a thousand students, it runs from primary school-age kids to high-school leavers, and its mission since it was established has been to reduce poverty by giving kids an education.
I met with the students and parents and teachers and I had the honour of opening the school’s new space for creative and performing arts, the Matilda Cultural Centre.
It’s a space where students are learning and performing, making music and telling stories.
It’s a space for them to experiment and play, gain confidence and insight and learn about themselves and about the world.
It’s a space that Australia was proud to help fund.
And standing there and seeing these brilliant kids performing, listening to them make music on these marimbas, getting a bit of a lesson on how to make music on a marimba, reminded me of a simple truth.
That, while music, dance, and theatre may look different from place to place, all art communicates ideas and feelings and an understanding that is beyond any formal language, certainly beyond the language of diplomacy or trade.
And it makes links and connections that can be profound.
These are the kinds of links that Australia wants with Africa.
We want our relationships to be about understanding and shared aspirations.
Not just transactions, not just resources.
We want our relationships to be about what we can make and achieve together.
The coming years promise much for Australia and Africa both.
And, just as the Matilda Cultural Centre has given young people the space to create, Australia and Africa can create something together.
A relationship grounded in our links in the past.
A partnership that is equal to the challenges of the moment, and alive to the opportunities of the future.
Thank you.