Part of the reason that Canada has not been doing this has to do with how we entirely shifted our focus to Afghanistan in the early 2010s. If you recall, 2002 was the very first time that Canada invited African leaders to the Kananaskis conference under former prime minister Chrétien.
That was the momentum that Canada was building. In fact, we were able to leverage a lot of diplomatic.... We scored a lot of diplomatic points at that time. For example, African leaders supported the establishment of the International Criminal Court, the responsibility to protect and the Kimberley processing certification scheme, which deals with conflict diamonds, but then we stepped back. That is why I said that we actually lost that diplomatic momentum. It was because of stepping back out of these things.
I think Canada was among the first countries to establish observer status at the African Union when it was transformed from the Organization of African Unity in 2002, but it took us up to about 2020 or so before we established a permanent mission there. That is how much momentum we lost over two decades.