Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is traveling to Africa as her government develops a much-delayed plan for how to engage with the continent.
Ms Joly will travel to Ivory Coast on Monday before spending two days in South Africa from Wednesday.
His office says the trip to Ivory Coast is aimed at exploring shared counterterrorism priorities and affirming Canada’s ties with English- and French-speaking countries.
The meetings in South Africa will allow Ms Joly to 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 on their approach to partnerships in Africa, including to consider where best to place diplomats and what issues should be priorities.
The Liberals have been developing what they first called an Africa strategy for nearly three years, but last year downgraded the project to a framework. In April, a senior official said there was no longer an official name for the plan, which Ottawa has been calling its “approach” to the continent since this week.
Public administration experts have already pointed out that strategies refer to multi-year plans that often provide for allocations of funds, while frameworks are a generic set of principles.
In 2022, senators on the foreign affairs committee warned that Canada was falling behind both its peers and its adversaries in forming economic ties on the continent.
Africa is bucking a global trend of demographic decline, with a burgeoning youth population and a raft of trade deals and infrastructure projects that economists say will lead to rapid economic growth.
Canada has already committed to developing some sort of economic cooperation plan with Africa and concluded consultations on it last summer. It is unclear whether this project will be integrated into the broader approach led by Minister Joly.
International aid experts have called on Canada to better publicize the projects it funds on the continent and to adopt a more coherent approach to both development and trade.
Groups like One Campaign and Cuso International have argued that Canada is losing relevance due to its continued disengagement, ceding ground to Russia and China.
Joly’s trip also comes at a time when Canada is being asked to donate part of its vaccine supply that can help stem MPOX, also known as monkeypox.
Ottawa says it is studying how best to help countries where the disease is spreading rapidly, but has not indicated a plan to share Canada’s stockpile with developing countries.
The World Health Organization declared COPD a public health emergency of international concern on August 14 due to its rapid spread across the African continent, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called on countries like Canada to share vaccine doses.
South Africa has previously criticized countries like Canada for hoarding badly needed COVID-19 vaccines in Africa and failing to support efforts to lift patents on COVID-19 drugs and vaccines that are rarely allowed to be manufactured in African countries.