DAKAR, SENEGAL - Africa is on the cusp of a 21st-century renaissance that promises to end decades of irrelevance and give its 800 million citizens the economic and democratic tools they need to influence international affairs, Jean Chrétien said yesterday.
But human rights activists here warn that Mr. Chrétien and other Western leaders are raising unrealistic hopes of political, economic and human rights reform they say many African leaders are either unable, or unwilling, to implement.
On the final day of his six-nation, pan-African tour, the Prime Minister said he has been convinced the continent's leaders are committed to sweeping changes in governance that will draw billions of dollars in desperately needed public and private investment.
"The 21st century will be the century in which Africa will really enter the international community," Mr. Chrétien said during meetings with Abdoulaye Wade, the President of Senegal.
Canadian officials have declared Mr. Chrétien's whirlwind diplomatic tour a success in building support among Africa's most influential leaders for a long-term development plan drafted by the Group of Eight industrialized countries.
The G8 plan is an official response to an African-designed initiative called the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and promises as much as $50-billion in new aid from Canada, the United States and the European Union.
But despite an abundance of warm rhetoric about a new African partnership with the G8, criticism of the plan is still abundant in Africa. On a continent where even the more progressive leaders stand as allies with despotic regimes, and where shattered economies have left millions struggling to survive, critics say the G8's proposed Africa Action Plan could easily fail if rhetoric is not followed by real change.
"I do not believe the G8 are serious about this. This sort of thing has been said before, that aid would be tied to human rights and democracy," said Mesfin Wolde-Mariam, chairman of the Human Rights Council in Ethiopia, where Mr. Chrétien visited this week.
"Aid or investment is not going to help us move in the right direction unless we ourselves wake up to the idea -- the principle -- that unless the people are liberated, hunger and famine will always be present."
Mr. Wolde-Mariam said "Africa is a tragedy" affected by decades of war, corruption and Western indifference.
The African leaders Mr. Chrétien visited on the tour are considered some of the most committed reformers on the continent -- South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria's Olusegon Obasanjo, Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi and Senegal's Wade. But even in many of those nations, democracy remains in its infancy, civil strife bubbles below the surface and rights are curtailed.
As he has done during past visits to countries such as China, Mr. Chrétien withheld criticism on human rights issues during his tour.
"Just because they are not perfect, it does not mean you do nothing," he said. "It is progress that counts."
The challenge for Africa is huge. The continent has 12% of the world's population but participates in less than 2% of its trade. Of the 48 poorest countries in the world, 36 are in Africa.
Canadian officials admit many of the continent's more regressive regimes will be less committed to NEPAD and the G8 because they believe that only more powerful nations such as South Africa and Nigeria will reap the benefits of Western cash.
But long-time Africa experts in Mr. Chrétien's inner circle argue the mood for reform -- and the willingness to accept a Western recipe for economic success -- is greater now than ever on the continent.
"I am personally really impressed by the difference that exists between what I knew 10 years ago and what exists now," said Claude Laverdure, a former ambassador to Algeria and Rwanda who now serves as Mr. Chrétien's foreign policy advisor. "Over the last 10 days, we heard comments and we heard leaders who are very different from those who I had worked with.... This continent is moving."
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