Multinational visual communication platform Canva has officially launched in South Africa, prioritising localisation, education, and artificial intelligence (AI) in its mission to make design tools more accessible and empower creators across the country.
Operating from a new regional office in Rosebank, the company has launched a dedicated South African team, which it says represents a key step in its broader Africa strategy.
“Canva’s mission is to empower the whole world to design, and we’re really excited to bring that mission to Africa,” said Duncan Clark, head of EMEA at Canva, highlighting the continent’s importance for the future.
“Africa is home to extraordinary creativity, energy, and potential, and we’re proud to deepen our commitment on the ground.”
Canva has surpassed R60bn ($3.5bn) in annual revenue and now boasts 260-million monthly active users globally, with more than 77-million designs created by South Africans this year alone.
Clark said Canva was focused on optimising product experience by ensuring local community representation, including designing templates specifically with local audiences in mind.
The company has been facilitating this by expanding various design programmes, giving local creators opportunities to learn, collaborate, and monetise their work through the Canva Creator platform.
Additionally, Canva offers South African languages such as isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans, Sesotho, siSwati, and isiNdebele as part of nearly 20 African languages available on the platform.
Mzamo Masito, Africa expansion lead at Canva, emphasised that creativity has never been in short supply across the continent, but “what’s often missing is access”.
He added: “This next chapter is about changing that. Whether it’s a young person designing from a township classroom or a creator turning their talent into income, we want Africans to feel like Canva was made with them and for them.”
According to Unicef, by 2050, roughly 40% of the world’s children are projected to live in Africa, making it a key region for education and creative opportunities. Clark calls this highly relevant for Canva, describing the company as “completely obsessed with educational empowerment.”
He said Canva has 100-million monthly active users in schools globally and offers its premium tools completely free to more than 800,000 charities and nonprofits worldwide.
It is also partnering with leading South African tertiary institutions, including the University of Cape Town, the University of Johannesburg, Rhodes University, and the University of Pretoria, as well as with private education provider ADvTECH, to enable Canva Education for staff and students — with the latter already generating more than 30,000 designs since July.
The company also signed an MOU with Ethiopia’s ministry of education and integrated with Snapplify, a global edtech platform, providing seamless access to more than 800,000 learners and 100,000 teachers.
Additionally, Canva has introduced local currency pricing in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana, helping users avoid foreign exchange fees and pay in familiar amounts. To further simplify payments, Canva has added popular local methods such as M-PESA in East Africa and Verve cards and NIBSS bank transfers in Nigeria, expanding access to more than 100-million potential users across the continent.
Clark added they’d also “been working really hard to understand all the constraints around data usage and making our product work better offline so that users can have an experience that’s optimised for the local infrastructure”.
Recently, Canva relaunched its Affinity Creative Suite, a professional photo, design, and layout software program, available for free.
“We think this is an enormous opportunity for not only professional designers but also design students and the design curious in Africa and in other countries, where income levels have often priced people out from professional tools,” said Clark.
Responding to fears that AI could replace human creativity, Clark said the platform’s growth tells a different story: “If you look at Canva’s monthly active users, you can see that that isn’t really what’s happening. We’re growing exponentially. So, the AI that we’re putting into Canva as an optional layer is accelerating the number of people who feel able to design.”
Additionally, Canva also released its own foundational AI model a few weeks ago. Clark said the model was trained only on templates that were provided to Canva for reuse, “specifically by our template design community”.
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