SPEECHES
MR. KILGOUR - ADDRESSTHE AFRICAN SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP,ST. THOMAS CHURCH ONWORKING TOWARD AN AFRICAN RENAISSANCE - OTTAWA, ONTARIO
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
NOTES FOR AN ADDRESS BY
THE HONOURABLE DAVID KILGOUR
SECRETARY OF STATE (LATIN AMERICA AND AFRICA)
TO
THE AFRICAN SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP, ST. THOMAS CHURCH
ON
WORKING TOWARD AN AFRICAN RENAISSANCE
OTTAWA, Ontario
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 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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