Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly speaks with reporters in the Foyer of the House of Commons before Question Period in Ottawa, on May 21.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
The federal government will unveil its long-delayed Africa strategy by the end of this year, with Canada seeking a role as a quiet backroom peacemaker for some of the continent’s most protracted conflicts, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says.
The government first began planning an Africa strategy nearly three years ago, but the plans were repeatedly sidetracked. Even now, its launch will have to wait until after the rollout of Canada’s new Arctic strategy this fall, Ms. Joly told The Globe and Mail.
Ms. Joly wrapped up a four-day visit to Africa this week with a stop in South Africa, a country that has suffered the same lack of attention from Canada that many other African countries have experienced.
South Africa has waited more than 20 years for an official bilateral visit by a Canadian foreign minister, aside from a brief visit by a minister during Nelson Mandela’s funeral in 2013.
Ms. Joly acknowledged that her government has failed to pay enough attention to South Africa, a member of the G20 bloc and a leading African economic power.
“For the past two decades, we have not invested enough energy into it,” she said in an interview at the Canadian trade office in Johannesburg.
She also acknowledged the decades-long delay in a bilateral visit when she met South Africa’s foreign minister, Ronald Lamola. “It’s been a while, it’s been a while,” Ms. Joly told him in opening remarks at their meeting in Pretoria this week.
In the late 1980s and most of the 1990s, Canada forged strong links to South Africa’s liberation movement by pushing for global sanctions against the apartheid regime and then by helping in the drafting of South Africa’s new democratic constitution. But it has largely squandered that diplomatic advantage by letting the relationship deteriorate since then, critics say.
“My personal goal is to make sure that we change that, and we build on what we were able to achieve together years ago, and I think there’s a lot of openness on the part of South Africa to do that,” Ms. Joly said.
Mr. Lamola, in an interview with a South African radio station, said he was trying to “revive” the relationship with Canada – an allusion to their closeness in the past. “We remain indebted to Canada for the role it played in the formulation of the Bill of Rights chapter in our Constitution,” he told Ms. Joly in their meeting.
The delay in the Canadian visit, however, meant that Ms. Joly’s visit was fortuitously timed in some ways. She became the first foreign minister of any country to be hosted by Mr. Lamola after his appointment in the coalition cabinet that took office when the long-ruling African National Congress lost its electoral majority in late May.
She also noted that she was visiting South Africa during the 30th anniversary of the year when democracy replaced the apartheid system of white-minority rule.
Both countries are now busily preparing for key roles next year when Canada will host the G7 summit and South Africa will host the G20 summit. The summits will allow them to co-ordinate and align their priority issues, she said, calling it a “historic moment” for the two countries.
Ms. Joly told Mr. Lamola that she wants the federal government’s new Africa strategy to create an “honest partnership” between Canada and Africa.
In the interview later, when asked about the delay in drafting the Africa strategy, she said her term as minister has been “defined by events” – a series of urgent crises that included “three wars and six evacuations.” She was referring to the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan and the evacuation of Canadian citizens from all three places, along with evacuations from Haiti, Israel and the West Bank.
She said the new Africa strategy could help solidify a role for Canada as a broker and mediator in African peace negotiations. Over the past several years, she said, the federal government has played a quiet diplomatic role in seeking solutions to conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan and Cameroon, often holding extensive talks with key leaders and relaying information to the official mediators in peace negotiations.
In the Cameroon case, Canada mediated a series of peace talks between regional and national officials until President Paul Biya eventually rejected the process, she said.
“I think fundamentally that Canada can be a very honest and trusted partner for Africa,” she said.
“I think there’s a lot of goodwill for Canada in Africa. We don’t have the same history as other Western countries, although, of course, we have a colonial past in our own country. I think we’ve played a key role in South Africa, for example, in ending apartheid and helping the transition to democracy. We need to go back to our roots.”
On the first two days of her Africa trip this week, Ms. Joly visited Ivory Coast and met with regional experts to discuss security issues in the Sahel region of West Africa, where escalating insurgencies and military coups have caused havoc.
To ensure a continuing presence in the region, Canada will maintain its embassies in Mali and Burkina Faso, despite the military coups in both countries and in neighbouring Niger, she said.