That's a great example. The Sahel is an area that, without a change in demographic trajectory, will collapse. In Niger there is a fertility rate of about seven children per woman right now, and Mali is at about five or six, and they are so resource-constrained and water-challenged that they can hardly support the existing population.
How does one adjust this? Part of it is working with the existing government, building on the great work that was done in MNCH—work that is being continued and expanded in a lovely cross-partisan way—and then working with some of the most creative partners there.
The Ouagadougou Partnership, which is basically a partnership of a lot of the francophone countries in the Sahel, is doing outstanding work on family planning and is working with religious leaders and community leaders there in a way that embeds empowering women within the culture rather than presenting it as some foreign imposition.
My sense is that we actually have a unique role to play in that area. I think the issue is making sure that we're providing the additional resources to do it. To really change the needle on sexual and reproductive health and rights would probably require the equivalent of about 5% of our present ODA, meaning that about $250 million a year would empower probably 18 million girls and women. That's equivalent to all the women in Canada today. If we were able to do that over the next four years, working with partners like Family Planning 2020, we could to help change the demographic destiny of that region.
What would it take? It would require a very structured, focused approach with resources and then building the internal capacity here to really program this properly.