Working
Towards an African Renaissance
Remarks
by Hon. David Kilgour, MP
for Edmonton Southeast
and Secretary of State for
Africa and Latin America
To The African Spiritual
Fellowship, St. John’s
Church, Ottawa
December 3, 2000
Like you,
I want to ensure that Canada not only responds
to events across Africa, but has the foresight
to implement a policy which will contribute
significantly towards the African renaissance.
The continent is appearing more prominently
on radar screens at the Department of Foreign
Affairs in the past few years than ever
before.
The human
security emphasis has certainly addressed
issues which are of greatest concern in
Africa, including small arms, child soldiers,
and landmines. CIDA has also placed Africa
at the heart of its programming, with new
initiatives to combat HIV/AIDS, illiteracy,
poverty and encouraging good governance
generally. In addition, CIDA was the principal
sponsor of the four-city "Africa Direct"
initiative in the spring of 2000. While
these efforts represent a steps towards
building a new partnership with Africa,
there is much more to be done. We need to
identify ways in which to become more comprehensively
engaged on the continent in conflict resolution
and encouraging more active involvement
by our private sector and civil society
in addressing challenges such as the scourge
of HIV/AIDS.
December
1st marked World AIDS Day, which provided
an occasion for reflection about the dimensions
of the pandemic. HIV/AIDS has been described
as the most catastrophic health crisis of
our time. Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicentre
with an estimated 25.3 million sufferers.
Debt burdens have severely constrained what
African governments can afford to spend
on health care. This at a time when the
HIV/AIDS pandemic is sweeping the continent,
leaving graveyards of millions in its wake.
Approximately70% of all people in the world
infected with HIV live in Africa; nine out
of ten children in the world infected with
the disease live on the continent.
Approximately
5,500 Africans die daily from it, which
is more than the number of Africans killed
in war. It is estimated that 30 million
Africans will perish as a result of HIV/AIDS
in the next five years. African leaders
are finally acknowledging that AIDS constitutes
a national crisis in many countries, threatening
the entire continent’s economic and
social development.
The Canadian
government has responded by providing an
additional $50 million to support projects
to fight AIDS in each major region of Africa.
A major focus of our programming is prevention
and education, with the aim of curbing the
disease where the spread is most rampant.
There are drug companies in our country,
I’m told, which have volunteered to
provide batches of AIDS drugs at reduced
prices to Africans; this humanitarianism
on the part of the private sector needs
to be applauded. Other pharmaceutical companies
are still fighting compulsory licencing.
They say it will erode the significance
of patents, cut into research funding, and
possibly lead to poor and perhaps dangerous
reproductions of their products.
The five
drug companies which have been in negotiations
with the World Health Organisation, however,
are proposing to drop their prices by 80%.
This is very welcome , but even a four-fifths
reduction would only bring the cost of a
year’s worth of antiretroviral drugs
from $12,000 to $2,400. Developing countries
generally spend only $4 per person each
year on health care. More needs to be done,
and fast. It is important to note that the
problem of AIDS treatment around the world
is not only about drug prices. Beyond drug
costs is the testing necessary to measure
the success of antiretroviral drugs and
to monitor the emergence of viral resistance.
AIDS lies
at the intersection of some of the most
important issues of our day, including poverty,
globalization and the lack of health care
infrastructure. These issues must be dealt
with aggressively in partnership with African
governments. Part of poverty elimination
is paying more attention to the educational
needs of African children, who suffer from
a lack of skilled teachers, functional classrooms
and Internet connectivity. Three- year-
old computers, which have been brandished
‘obsolete,’ languish in the basements
of firms across this country, while university
students across Africa cannot access even
communal computers. In what is considered
the most developed country in Africa, in
the most highly-rated university on the
continent, 400 students share one computer
.It broke down about four weeks ago. I am
talking about the University of Witwatersrand
in Johannesburg, South Africa, where students
cannot find computers to print their academic
papers or use the Internet for research
purposes. If this is the situation there,
we can guess at the situation in rural areas
in much less developed countries.
As a nation,
we used to be far more proactive in promoting
education in Africa, bringing numerous African
students to study at Canadian universities,
and sending teachers to contribute their
skills in African classrooms. For example,
Robert Fowler, our former Ambassador to
the United Nations, spent a number of years
teaching in Rwanda, as did many others of
his generation. We have seemingly lost our
will to assist in a major way in the educational
sector; I think it is high time that we
find new ways to collaborate in making education
more accessible to Africans in the information
age. One initiative we are pursuing is the
encouragement of more Canadian private sector
firms to take an interest in the sector.
The first tangible steps in this direction
were the Learning and Technology Mission
to South Africa in March 2000, which I led.
As a partial result of our encouragement,
the private sector has formed a new association
called Knowledge Resources Canada to bring
together Canadian firms involved in the
provision of "learnware," initially
targeting South Africa and later all of
Sub-Saharan Africa.
As a government,
we would like to support civil society actors
who seek to enhance knowledge mobility and
bridge the digital divide effectively. In
an age of Internet connectivity and computer
facilitated learning, not all of our children
are being given the chance to compete on
an even playing field. Part of our challenge
is to ensure that the benefits and opportunities
of the new electronic age are not confined
to an educated few. Closing the knowledge
gap becomes critical to development. In
this century, the economy of any country
will only be as strong as the skills of
its workforce.
Canada is
a leading provider of information technology.
There have been notable successes by Canadian
firms, such as SR Telecom, Harris and Nortel
to introduce the latest in communications
technology to Sub-Saharan Africa, but we
have been under-represented in making available
our expertise in internet-based technology,
and software applications, which the region
so desperately needs if it is to take its
place in the world of the 21st century.
A major focus of our efforts in the coming
months will be the encouragement of more
Canadian high-technology firms to consider
Africa in formulating their world market
development strategies.
Canadian
policy towards African nations has also
been driven by the human security agenda,
which posits that the physical security
of a state is not necessarily synonymous
with the security of its peoples. Peace
is more than the absence of war or the containment
of conflict; security also entails the creation
of economic justice , social harmony and
opportunity for all.
Human security
is increasingly recognized as a cornerstone
of foreign policy both in Canada and other
nations. The absence of meaningful human
security in many African countries has been
the most daunting challenge confronting
stability in the region. Canada is seeking
new partnerships with African states to
confront these challenges. There is a common
understanding that Canadians share a common
destiny with Africans; if humanity is indivisible,
then we all need to work together to promote
development, trade, and conflict resolution.
Many African
states are currently mired in conflict,
with the ‘arc of crisis’ stretching
from Angola to the Upper Nile basin. The
continent currently accounts for half of
the world’s war-related deaths and
struggles to assist eight million refugees.
A dozen major wars and twice as many rumbling
insurrections continue to cause devastation
throughout the continent. While it is true
that there will be no peace without development,
there will also be no development without
peace. Canada must engage in conflict resolution
on the continent more actively in the coming
years.
This past
summer, I visited the Great Lakes region
of Central Africa in order to assess the
prospects for peace and to reiterate Canada’s
support for the Lusaka Peace Agreement in
the Democratic Republic of Congo and the
peace process in Burundi. The conflict in
the DRC threatens to destabilize the entire
region. At least nine rebel groups are using
the DRC as a springboard to launch attacks
into neighbouring countries and six neighbouring
states have troops positioned within DRC
territory. The country has become a virtual
playground for self-enrichment with its
rich deposits of diamonds, gold and other
natural resources.
In support
of the Lusaka Peace Agreement ,Canada has
committed $2.5 million to support the Joint
Military Commission, the national dialogue
and the demobilization and reintegration
of child soldiers. A further $1.2 million
has been provided for the Arusha Peace Process
in Burundi under the facilitation of Nelson
Mandela. We are all well aware of the urgent
need to prevent conflict diamonds from filling
the coffers of rebel groups operating not
only in the DRC but in other conflict zones
on the continent.
Canadian
officials have actively participated in
recent multilateral meetings concerning
the trade in conflict diamonds, and are
working to devise an effective certification
scheme for such diamonds .
One of the
most disturbing issues in a number of war-
ravaged African states is the plight of
war-affected children, in particular the
emerging trend of targeting children both
as fighters and victims. The issue of these
children is one of the priorities of Canada
and we have played a leadership role on
it. Last April, we co-hosted with the Government
of Ghana a regional conference on war-affected
children. In September, Canada hosted the
International Conference on War-Affected
Children in Winnipeg. One result was an
agreement , with Uganda, Sudan and Egypt
issuing a joint statement undertaking to
actively support initiatives to return and
rehabilitate children from northern Uganda
abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army.
This was a concrete demonstration of Canada’s
political will to assist with the process
of release, protection, reintegration and
rehabilitation of children affected by armed
conflict. Without the support and determination
of African partner governments, these efforts
would be futile.
Canada has
also worked collaboratively with African
nations to push the international community
for deeper, broader and faster debt relief.
Major action is required to alleviate unmanageable
debt burdens where many African countries
find themselves paying more than 60% of
revenues generated from exports to donors
and commercial lenders. Canada has forgiven
$39 million of debt for Senegal, Benin,
Mali, Mozambique and Burkina Faso. Recently
Finance Minister Paul Martin publicly pressed
creditor countries to write off additional
debt as a part of a multilateral drive towards
debt reduction.
A key element
in our foreign policy towards Africa is
trade promotion, elements of which, I have
already mentioned. It is the firm belief
of our re-elected government that economic
diplomacy will be the engine which drives
forward the African renaissance. Increased
trade will create economic growth and jobs
in both Canada and Africa. Our investment
on the continent tripled over the last decade,
and two-way trade now exceeds $2 billion.
Over the last few years it has been countries
in Sub-Saharan Africa, not Asia or Latin
America, that have led the world in percentage
economic growth. Africa is now considered
one of the last regions with unexploited
high economic and social growth potential.
The Department
of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
has taken steps to assist Canadian companies
looking to engage in these potentially lucrative
markets. Africa Direct, brought African
business people and government representatives
to Canada in order to forge links with the
private sector in this country. The program
included individual exchanges, lectures,
roundtables, visits to companies, and perhaps
most importantly presented opportunities
to network. The success of the event has
paved the way for much closer engagement
with partners in Africa on the trade front.
In
conclusion, our vision is
one of communities in Africa
which see peace more than
they do war, where knowledge
mobility makes education
the norm - not a luxury,
and people understand how
to protect themselves from
HIV/AIDS. Competitive economies
capable of spurring economic
growth and governments which
listen to their people -
that is our vision. Let
us not, as believers, forget
that Canada has its own
challenges in meeting the
needs of our fellow citizens,
and we can learn much from
African nations and their
experiences. This is what
makes our efforts to promote
human, social and economic
development a collaborative
effort. As African-Canadians,
all of you here have a valuable
role to play in providing
input into Canadian policy
towards African nations
and actively pursuing initiatives
which will contribute to
the African renaissance.
It is up to all of us to
make sure that Africa thrives.
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