Like you, I want to ensure that Canada not only responds to events across Africa but has the foresight to implement a policy that will contribute significantly to the African renaissance. In the past few years at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the continent has figured more prominently than ever before.

The human security emphasis has certainly addressed the issues of greatest concern in Africa, including small arms, child soldiers and land mines. CIDA [Canadian International Development Agency] has also placed Africa at the heart of its programming, with new initiatives on HIV/AIDS, literacy, poverty and good governance in general. In addition, CIDA was the principal sponsor of the four-city Africa Direct initiative in the spring of 2000. While these efforts represent steps toward 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 in conflict resolution on the continent, and to encourage more active involvement by our private sector and civil society in addressing challenges such as the scourge of HIV/AIDS.

December 1 was World AIDS Day -- 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 -- at a time when the HIV/AIDS pandemic is sweeping the continent, leaving graveyards of millions in its wake. Worldwide, approximately 70 percent of the people infected with HIV live in Africa; 9 out of 10 children infected with the disease live on the continent.

Approximately 5500 Africans die daily from AIDS -- more than the number killed in war. It is estimated that 30 million Africans will perish as a result of the disease 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 for fighting AIDS in each major region of Africa. Our programming focusses on prevention and education. The aim is to curb the spread of the disease where it is most rampant. There are drug companies in our country, I'm told, that have volunteered to provide batches of AIDS drugs at reduced prices to Africans; this humanitarianism on the part of the private sector deserves our commendation. Other pharmaceutical companies are still fighting compulsory licensing. They say it will erode the patent system, cut into research funding, and possibly lead to poor and perhaps dangerous copies of their products.

The five drug companies that have been in negotiations with the World Health Organization, however, are proposing to drop their prices by 80 percent. This is very welcome but a year's supply of anti-retroviral drugs, which now costs $12 000, would still cost $2400. Developing countries generally spend only $4 per person each year on health care. More needs to be done, and fast. What's more, the problem of AIDS treatment around the world is not only about drug prices. Also important is the testing required to measure the success of anti-retroviral 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 involves 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 labelled 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 that is the situation there, we can guess how bad it is 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 to 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. Now we seem to have 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 encourages more Canadian businesses to take an interest in the sector. The first tangible steps in this direction were the Learning and Technology Mission to South Africa, which I led in March 2000. 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, targeting South Africa initially 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 a level 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 is critical to development. In this century, the economy of any country will be only as strong as the skills of its work force.

Canada is a leading provider of information technology. Canadian firms such as SR Telecom, Harris and Nortel have had notable success in introducing 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 to encourage more Canadian high-technology firms to consider Africa when formulating their world market development strategies.

Canadian policy toward 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 in both 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 an understanding that Canadians share a common destiny with Africans; if humanity is indivisible, 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 it 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. In the coming years, Canada must engage more actively in conflict resolution on the continent.

This past summer I visited the Great Lakes region of Central Africa to assess the prospects for peace, and to reiterate Canada's support for the Lusaka Peace Agreement in the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC] 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 base from which to launch attacks into neighbouring countries, and six neighbouring states have troops positioned within DRC territory. The rich deposits of diamonds, gold and other natural resources are being used to fund these groups.

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 they are working to devise an effective certification scheme for diamonds that make their way on to the market.

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. Helping these children is one of Canada's priorities and we have played a leadership role on the issue. With the Government of Ghana, last April we co-hosted a regional conference on war-affected children. In September, Canada hosted the International Conference on War-Affected Children in Winnipeg. One result was that Uganda, Sudan and Egypt agreed to issue a joint statement affirming their active support for 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 with African nations to push the international community for deeper, broader and faster debt relief. Strong action is required to alleviate the unmanageable debt burdens of many African countries, which find themselves paying more than 60 percent of export revenues to donors and commercial lenders. Canada has forgiven $39 million of debts owed to us by 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 toward debt reduction.

A key element in our foreign policy toward 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 that 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 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, not Asia or Latin America, 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 businesspeople and government representatives to Canada in order to forge links with the private sector in this country. The program included individual exchanges, lectures, round tables and visits to companies; and perhaps most important, it presented opportunities for networking. 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 where peace is the norm, where knowledge mobility makes education universal rather than a luxury, and where people understand how to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. It is a vision of competitive economies capable of spurring economic growth, and of governments that listen to their people.

Let us not forget that Canada has its own challenges in meeting the needs of our fellow citizens, and that 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 for Canadian policy toward African nations and in actively pursuing initiatives that contribute to the African renaissance. It is up to all of us to make sure that Africa thrives.

Thank you.

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