Joly heads to Africa as Liberals craft ‘approach’ to continent, instead of strategy

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is headed to Africa as her government assembles a long-delayed plan on how to engage with the continent.

Joly is heading to Ivory Coast today before visiting South Africa for two days starting Wednesday.

Her office says the trip to Ivory Coast is aimed at exploring shared counterterrorism priorities and affirming Canada’s ties with both English- and French-speaking countries.

It says the stop in South Africa will see Joly discuss the economic partnership between the two countries and mark 30 years since the end of Apartheid.

The trip comes just days after the Liberals launched consultations for what they are now calling their approach to Africa, such as where to best station diplomats and what issues to focus on.

The Liberals have been assembling what they first called an Africa strategy for nearly three years, but they downgraded the project last year to call it a framework. In April, a senior bureaucrat said there was no longer a noun being used to describe the plan, which as of this week Ottawa now calls its “approach” to the continent.

Experts in public administration have previously pointed out that strategies are multi-year plans that often have funding allocations, while frameworks are a generic set of principles.

In 2022, senators on the foreign-affairs committee warned that Canada was falling behind both peers and adversaries in forming economic ties on the continent.

Africa is bucking a global trend of demographic decline, with a booming young population and a series of trade deals and infrastructure projects that economists expect will lead to economic booms.

Canada has already pledged some sort of plan for economic co-operation with Africa, and finished a consultation last summer. It’s unknown whether this project will be folded into the broader approach Joly is leading.

Aid experts have called on Canada to better brand the projects it funds on the continent and to have a more coherent approach to both development and trade.

Groups like the One Campaign and Cuso International have testified that Canada is losing relevance through continued disengagement, and thus ceding ground to Russia and China.

Joly’s trip also comes as Canada faces calls to donate some of its supply of vaccines that can help stem mpox, formerly known as monkeypox.

Ottawa says it’s looking into how it can best assist countries where the disease is spreading rapidly, but has indicated no plan to share Canada’s stockpile with developing countries.

The World Health Organization declared mpox a global public-health emergency on Aug. 14 due to rapid spread on the continent, where the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have asked countries like Canada to share vaccine doses.

South Africa previously called out countries like Canada for hoarding COVID-19 vaccines that were sorely needed in Africa, and for not supporting efforts to lift patents on COVID-19 medicines and vaccines that were rarely allowed to be manufactured in African countries.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 19, 2024.