Just to be clear to the committee members, I have said previously—and I have said this within and outside of my organization—that we acknowledge that there is systemic racism within the department. Yes, I joined a long time ago when those conversations were not taking place, but as a leader in an organization, I think it is absolutely essential that we ensure that those conversations take place and that we tackle them head-on.
In terms of some of the concrete things we're doing now, it's very important to look at IRCC's footprint around the world and the choices about where we allocate resources. I think there is a huge benefit to global processing. In the current context of the situation in India, our services were less impacted because we were able to move work. I think 89% of the caseload coming from India was managed outside of New Delhi, so that gave us that flexibility.
I think having a footprint on the ground in certain places needs to be improved. I think sub-Saharan Africa is absolutely one of those examples. We used to have between 35 and 40 staff. As of December 2023, for Canada-based staff in certain countries in sub-Saharan Africa, we are at 54 people. We've engaged 22 locally engaged decision-makers. They are part of our decision-making process. That means an increase of about 20 Canadian-based staff on the ground. We are looking to increase that even more.
I think that is a way to have a bit more migration diplomacy, intelligence on the ground and sensitivity to issues that would not necessarily be akin to the issues that someone in another location may face. I think that is one example of how we're trying to address the situation and make change.