In fact, CIDA people are not the ones who informed us. I believe it was the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade that decided, for a variety of reasons, to reduce the number of focus countries from 25 to 20, as I recall. In terms of the current list of focus countries, I believe there are seven African countries on the list.
Obviously, in light of the productive and long-standing relations between Burkina Faso and Canada, we felt this did not augur well; in our view, our excellent relations were such that we should have been on the list for three reasons in particular.
As I already said, the primary reason is that the private sector is extremely dynamic; private investments are rising every year. In my opinion, that is an asset that should justify our being on the list. It would mean we could receive the necessary support from the public sector that would allow the private sector to properly fulfill its role.
The second reason is that we regularly hold international consultations through which we are able to provide mutual support. In that regard, we believe we are in a position to support Canada in terms of some of its future ambitions. I am sure you understand my point.
And, as I said, Burkina Faso is also playing a major role in maintaining peace and security in the sub-region. And, for the good of private companies and our ongoing bilateral relations, there must be peace and security. Despite our limited means, we did take action to ensure that the security of some of our partners would not be threatened, or when that security was threatened, to help free the hostages.
We have also established good governance. As you know, we are subject to the APRM. I am sure you have heard about the APRM. It is a group of 28 countries that decided to assess one another and submit to a peer review. We were the eighth country to be reviewed, and the assessment was very positive.
I also referred to our orderly civil society and our free press. So, we had quite a few reasons to think that we would continue to be on that list.
Having said that, I do recognize that, in some social sectors such as education and health, Canada has provided additional resources. Thus funding increased from $10 million to $17 million, which is a considerable increase. However, psychologically speaking, we see our absence from the list as problematic.