Okay.
I think it's also an example, sir, of changing the channel with Brazil as we move into new areas of cooperation beyond the traditional ones.
In the case of CIDA, in 1968 we started the CIDA programming in Brazil, and according to my numbers, we provided nearly $200 million in official development assistance to Brazil. Now the Brazil of 1968 was not the Brazil of today. So for a period of about 25 years we have been providing assistance to Brazil.
The focus of that program looked at dealing with extreme poverty, education, and health. In that period, coincidentally—though the figures vary—people today say that under the last two terms of President Lula, between 20 million and 30 million people have moved from extreme poverty to the lower middle class, or from the latter to the middle class, however defined. If you look at per capita income across the country, a significant chunk of people have moved up in the scale to almost middle-income status. This is a figure that President Lula would refer to, and President Rousseff now is pursuing this as well as a priority, because of the extreme poverty we saw in the past, which, in the case of the urban centres, is still there today. But there have been tremendous strides and Canada, through CIDA , was very active as part of that process.
Now we have some programming left over--partnerships and multilateral programs, but small amounts--but the dynamic has changed with Brazil, because they're no longer an ODA-eligible country. We've brought Brazil up. We've helped them eradicate poverty, and along with other donors and the host government, we've moved millions of people up to a lower middle class environment. Now it's an opportunity for us to work with Brazil on exchanging best practices as donors, and also to work with Brazil in third countries.
We've done a bit of work with Brazil in Africa. I come back to that because of their lusophone connection with the Portuguese-speaking countries of Africa. We've had small collaborative projects in Mozambique and Angola. We're wanting to talk to them. I'd rather have CIDA expand on this, because it's not really our responsibility, but we in our department would like to see more cooperation with Brazil in third countries, including in Latin America.
Our hope is that we'll be able to move that into a new element of the relationship. It's one that makes us feel very good because we were part of that effort, through CIDA, of strengthening the economy and moving these people into more prosperous economic situations. And now we can work with that country, going forward, to turn it into an aid donor. It's a big donor. It has an aid agency. It's moving forward. But we want to see that as an area of cooperation, because between CIDA and their aid agency, there's much to talk about. We expect that the director general of CIDA policy will go to Brazil in the coming months to begin that conversation.