Canada and sub-Saharan Africa

Canada's fundamental interest in sub-Saharan Africa is to help reverse the region's social and economic marginalisation from the rest of the world. This marginalisation has had grave effects on all indices of African human development, peace and security, and governance. Over the past three years, African leaders have engaged substantively on the root causes of the marginalisation. Canada has played a leading role politically and diplomatically, reinforcing these African-led efforts, keeping Africa at the top of the international agenda and increasing significantly Canada's financial commitment to African development.

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) was presented in mid-2001. NEPAD resides on a long-term African vision for collective and national political and economic reform. It acknowledges that aid, by itself, is not enough to resolve problems. It aims to achieve sustainable growth by improving the aid, trade and debt relationships between Africa and the rest of the world, and by creating the conditions necessary to attract increased capital flows. This represents an unprecedented opportunity, and the most promising initiative yet to emerge to address Africa's underdevelopment and to re-couple it to the global economy.

The G8, led by Canada as Chair, responded to NEPAD in 2002 with the Africa Action Plan (AAP). Canada's own national AAP implementation and support for African development represented an ambitious programme and an increase in resources: $6 billion in new and existing resources over five years (2002-07).