If, as some have suggested, the G-8 African plan was to be Prime Minister Jean Chretien's legacy, it is looking more and more like a legacy of failure, as the smoke-filled rhetoric clears.
But the fault doesn't lie with Canada's prime minister. Rather, it lies with the assorted agendas of the world's richest countries and people.
To Chretien's credit, his battle to bring attention to the plight of 600 million of the world's most disadvantaged people will in all likelihood be deemed the fight of the century. That he met with only minor success in Kananaskis doesn't mean the war is over or the battle not worth the effort.
The question of legacy will lie in what happens next. Canada stands in a unique position when it comes to bringing assistance to the sub-Sahara region of Africa. This is due to the dual nature of our founding European cultures (which happen to have been the two big players in Africa) and to the fact that we have never been a colonial power.
All of the other seven members of the G-8 have a history of colonialism -- in Africa or in other parts of the world. That helps tarnish their commitment to come to the aid of the poorest people on the planet.
Japan, for example, is a lot less excited about aid to Africa than it is about helping parts of Asia where it had colonies in the past and over which it continues to exercise economic influence. Its aid is much more likely to be directed to that region, where it hopes to get a financial return on its investment.
France has been involved with aid in Africa -- particularly in its former colonies -- for decades but focuses its attention more on promoting French culture than issues of governance, health or general education.
Even recently, France has been linked to some of the most brutal movements on the continent -- groups in Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, for example. This has been absolutely counterproductive when it comes to issues of regional security or development. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has had to battle Sudanese-backed rebels with ties to France and has blamed the conflict for stymied attempts to bring openness and democracy to his country.
Italy's history in Ethiopia and Germany's in southwest Africa seems to have cooled them to the idea that they should shoulder their fair share of the burden of bringing the continent back to the community of nations. Germany, in fact, is often known by Africans more for dumping toxic waste in places such as Somalia than for dumping cash on impoverished public systems.
America has always spent more money shoring up client regimes in Africa than in promoting true development. Relatively affluent Egypt has long received far more help than the poorest regions, south of the Sahara.
While U.S. President George Bush has announced a new fund for education in Africa, he has already tied the hands of development agencies by excluding those who would empower women and give them knowledge about birth control or reproductive health.
And it is only by empowering women in Africa that the continent will ever slough off its poverty, illness and despair.
African development agencies have long called for greater Canadian involvement, particularly in this area. Canada is known to have expertise in issues of public health, education, governance and empowerment of women.
Chretien's determination to increase Canada's foreign aid budget, with the bulk of the increase going to the sub-Sahara region, is laudable. It is to be hoped that the money will be used to bring some of Canada's expertise to the refugee camps and in rebuilding communities of Africa.
But if Canada joins either in bilateral or multilateral deals with the likes of Great Britain, it will get the greatest bang for its bucks.
Such agreements can be used as moral suasion. Funding agencies controlled by the U.S. treasury, for example, can be convinced to join in a winning effort rather than having to go it on their own with little chance of success.
Britain and Canada (the two countries who most vocally pushed the African agenda at the Kananaskis summit) must also work together, for example, to stop recruiting Africa's doctors and professionals away from their homelands. They should also compensate countries for the cost of training the professionals whom they do acquire through immigration.
Outsiders who go to Africa are often surprised to find large numbers of well-educated and cosmopolitan professionals determined to pull themselves and their countries up by their boot straps. We have to stop luring those people out of the continent. We must give them the tools to bring Africa into the 21st century.
To fail to do this will not only be a moral and social black mark against developed nations, it will allow the conditions necessary to create the next great epidemic to fester. It may be even more costly or deadly than AIDS.
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