The notion of a benevolent Canada has been under attack this week. After riding the tiger of public outrage over its investments in war-torn Sudan for the lucrative part of four years, Talisman Energy jumped. Meantime, six Canadian mining companies were implicated in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The business news from Africa makes uncomfortable reading. But it confirms the unsentimental logic of capital. Canadian dollars can be as voracious as any. Capital investment determines the form and content of places, and the ebb and flow of nations and peoples often follow in the slipstreams of capital. Money makes the world go round.

That is pretty much the story Doug Jackson has been telling Canadian businessmen this week. Mr. Jackson is president of Coca-Cola in southern and eastern Africa, and he's been in Canada trying to sell South Africa as an investment opportunity. He has been telling Canadians how years of self-imposed and forced isolation from the global economy affected South Africa. For years, the country's businesses reflected the insularity of apartheid. But now South African companies must compete in the global market; its government and its businesses understand that they have to play a positive role in reconstructing society to achieve this. And in that process, Canada has been identified as a potentially benevolent ally.

Which all dovetails nicely with Jean Chrétien's attempts to make a name for himself in Africa. There are conflicting reports about his $500-million pledge to help rebuild Africa. Some argue adamantly that the Canada Africa Fund is recycled money; others suggest that, even if it is new money, it's chump change compared to the scale of the problems it seeks to address. But cynicism never changed anything, and I'd say that, even if he's only taking a tentative step in the right direction, Mr. Chrétien may be on to something.

Energy companies and certain mining companies may take some persuading to see Africa as anything other than a high-risk, high-return exploitation opportunity. But Canada, through its Canadian International Development Agency and International Development Research Centre, embraces a different approach to investment. CIDA's own promotional literature says that, while there is "no single path to development," Canada's moral capital can be leveraged to propose a development model predicated on a principle of mutual benefit and sustainable development.

While big bad Canadian business was attracting the headlines last week, in Toronto, a Kenyan businessman, Farouk Jiwa, was presented with the Equator Prize, which recognizes outstanding achievement in sustainable development. By engaging 2,500 subsistence farmers in Kenya, Honey Care Africa Ltd. has managed to build a profitable business through a strategic alliance between Western donors and NGOs, private enterprise and local communities.

Honey Care is based on the kind of economic model advocated in an article in the September Harvard Business Review. Authors C. K. Prahalad and Allan Hammond argue that multinationals can improve the lives of billions of the world's poorest by stimulating economic activity in low-income markets.

Advocates of the pyramid model of development, they share intellectual links with the Schulich School of Business at York University -- where Farouk Jiwa, general manager of Honey Care Africa, is taking a master's degree. The fact that Mr. Jiwa is studying in Canada suggests the possibility of stronger links between immigration and development policy.

So argues a French civil servant, Patrick Weil, who was touting such ideas in Ottawa this past week. Mr. Weil is the author of a 1997 report that propelled France's Socialist government to introduce major immigration reforms. He argues that "foreign students should be encouraged to circulate between their host country and their home state." To encourage this, he suggests "modifying foreign aid disbursement so that more of it is available to individuals who wish to initiate development projects in their home country."

Use those with a personal knowledge of their native countries to act as development experts and facilitators? It seems so sensible -- and only illustrates what we all already know: that progress is about remaining open to the equitable exchange of ideas, people, resources and capital.
wiwa@dial.pipex.com