What to know
- The Federation of African Canadian Economics (FACE) Coalition was founded in 2021 to advance Black entrepreneurship and economic empowerment across Canada.
- Through the Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund, FACE has approved $67.1 million in loans and disbursed $50.4 million by Mar. 31, 2025, supporting nearly 600 Black-owned businesses.
- FACE links today’s push for supplier diversity, capital access and policy reform to a long history of Black economic self-determination in communities across the country like Buxton in Ontario, Africville in Nova Scotia and Little Burgundy in Quebec.
- This Black History Month, the organization is urging Canada to move beyond recognition toward reinvestment that closes persistent wealth gaps.
Black History Month often asks us to look back. But what if it also invited us to look forward, and instead imagine what Black Canadians could look like, say, 50 years from now?
That’s what the Federation of African Canadian Economics (FACE) Coalition is envisioning. The national nonprofit focused on advancing Black entrepreneurship and economic empowerment is drawing a direct line between historic Black self-determination and the entrepreneurial ecosystems being built today.
Founded in 2021, FACE administers the Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund (BELF), which has approved $67.1 million in loans and disbursed $50.4 million, supporting nearly 600 Black-owned businesses by Mar. 31, 2025 across Canada – spanning multiple industries, regions, and languages.
A long-standing history of building
Black entrepreneurship in Canada has had its hardships since the very beginning. In fact, it all began in spite of barriers.
“Black social and entrepreneurial innovation is not new in Canada and its history is impressive considering it persisted under explicit systemic, financial and social barriers erected to prohibit its growth and evolution,” FACE CEO Tiffany Callender said to Now Toronto.
Callender points to historic Black communities such as Buxton (Ontario), Africville (Nova Scotia), Little Burgundy (Quebec) and Amber Valley (Alberta) — places where Black Canadians built schools, businesses, churches and mutual aid networks, often without institutional support.
These communities, at the very root of it all, were economic ecosystems. They were diverse, they treated cultural staples like music, craftsmanship, land and education as capital, all things Callender says set them up for a rich future.
“Our success today in influencing policy and systems to invest in the social and economic advancement of Black Canadian communities rests squarely on the tenacity and determination of the Black communities and Black visionaries who built based on their internal potential, not from the external conditions they experienced,” Callender says. “They were the authors of the first love letters to a future Black Canada.”
Black History Month reflects decades of advocacy
In 1979, Toronto became one of the first municipalities in Canada to formally proclaim Black History Month, thanks to community advocacy through the Ontario Black History Society. Ontario officially recognized it in 1993. The House of Commons followed in 1995, and in 2008, the late Senator Donald Oliver sponsored a motion to recognize February as Black History Month across Canada.
Recognition matters, but FACE urges that remembrance without reinvestment is incomplete.
The next chapter, it suggests, must be about structural change: reform that expands supplier diversity, sustainable capital access, and public policy designed to close wealth gaps.
Through the Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund, FACE has helped hundreds of Black-owned businesses scale operations, hire staff and build generational wealth. The organization sees this as part of an ecosystem-wide shift — one where financial institutions, governments and corporations understand that investing in Black entrepreneurship strengthens Canada’s entire
FACE’s message this Black History Month is both reflective and forward-looking. Fifty years from now, Black Canada will be shaped by the decisions made today; by where capital flows, by who gets access, and by whether recognition evolves into redistribution, and FACE is here to open the generational doors.
And, as Callender suggests, that future is already being drafted in community hubs across the country by those determined to build not just for survival
