Excited voters in South Sudan (and a large Diaspora outside the country) begin to vote on Sunday on a long-awaited referendum that will result in the de jure break-up of greater Sudan. From a practical point of view, however, the South has been disconnected from the North for five years and historically Sudan's map footprint glossed over the weak authority projected from Khartoum since the end of colonial rule in 1956. In fact, decades of war and violence illustrated that politics by other means became the norm of power projection from Khartoum, and often the modus operandi in central political struggles as well.
      There is little doubt how Southerners will vote. Those in the Canadian Diaspora will over-whelmingly vote for secession. They are in Canada due precisely to the North-South struggle. But secession for many of them is a starting point, not an end. There are deep concerns over the leadership of the SPLM. The South is hardly a united whole. Economic development has been sluggish, infrastructure build-out slow, corruption growing.  Secession will lead to heightened expectations that the current leadership and political configuration seems ill equipped to meet.  With government dependent on revenues from oil, and control of oil proceeds a constant struggle with Khartoum, secession will not improve the situation. There is hope that South Sudan will pursue more integration into the East African economy: Juba already has stronger linkages to Uganda and Kenya than to the North. But there are significant political hurdles to overcome to unlock the potential of the South Sudanese economy. Political geography is not currently a positive influence: northern Uganda, northern DR Congo, and eastern CAR and Chad remain plagued by various rebel groups, militias, and banditry.
      The US has been watching Sudan closely. The Obama Administration is engaged. George Clooney has been at the forefront of using his celebrity to focus both official and public attention on the Southern vote. Canada is also engaged in Sudan, although future commitments are on uncertain ground give future cuts to DND, DFAIT, and CIDA. But South Sudan is going to require a concerted effort, real human and resource investment, by its substantial Diaspora. Canada, the US, and other donor countries have limited success over fifty years of helping African and post-conflict states become healthy, robust political economies. We're apt to do all the same mistakes rather than learning from the past and seeing the emergence of South Sudan as a real substantive moment in 21st Century Africa.  We can't control the outcome of African economic and political developments, but we can cultivate trajectories at critical moments, and the coming few months will mark a critical moment in the lives of the South Sudanese (of the possible Republic of Kush) and the whole of East Africa.

More resources here:
http://www.satsentinel.org/ - The Clooney spearheaded effort to use satellite imagery to track troop movements and violence in the South Sudan region.
http://unmis.unmissions.org/ - Official UNMIS (UN Mission in Sudan) website.
http://www.goss-online.org/ - Govt of South Sudan website
http://www.sudan.net - Extensive resources about Sudan
Globe and Mail coverage (Geoffrey York)
13 January 2011 - South Sudanese voters surpass the 60% threshold to ensure the referendum results are recognized by North

      Well, my prediction that Canada would get the vote despite itself proved illusory (see below). Canada did not deserve a seat on the Security Council but it also is not clear that Portugal does either. However, Canada's rebuff of the UN on peacekeeping, climate change, and indigenous policy, in addition to its Middle East policy and public marginalization of Africa, added up more enemies than Portugal's economic crisis ever could.
     Canadians should take this opportunity to rethink its entire approach to Africa. Today, Bill C-300, the private member's bill to monitor Canadian extractive industries abroad, will have its third reading and vote. The bill tries to fill gaps left when the current goverment released its response to the CSR Roundtables report. It is a bad bill with good intentions. With a leadership deficit in the PMO and PCO that really doesn't understand that Africa is more intrinsically important to Canada than ever before, we continue to flail around wasting the reputation built across the continent since the 1950s. This is not to say that reputation itself is important. Rather, it is to say that the hard power traditionalists have ignored the tremendous resource of soft (persuasive) and sticky (attractive) power that Canada once wielded to generally beneficial effect to world order. 
     Back to Bill C-300: if passed and ultimately signed into law (which for a number of reasons is highly unlikely), the bill would likely harm both Canada and Africa contrary to its supporters intentions. Mining firms will move their listings abroad (Barrick already hived off its Tanzanian holdings into African Barrick gold listed on the LSE). Canada wil suffer directly and indirectly from this movement. African host communities and countries will have to deal with firms from other countries whose governments wield bigger sticks abroad. Bigger firms  will take the lead, which also can bring more pressure to bear on local governments.  Canadian mining firms in general, and there are always bad apples in every group, already have better employment, HSE, and CSR policies in place than almost all of their international competitors. Ask a Zambian mine worker if they prefer to work for a Canadian or a Chinese copper mine? 
    Rather than Bill C-300, Canada needs to do three things: 1) Recognize that we are a major player in Africa (over $25 billion in extractive FDI and growing) and leverage that fact rather than ignore it; 2) Increase the official Canadian presence across the continent rather than cutting embassies and trade staff so as to garner a better, on-the-ground understanding of the challenges  of doing extractive development in the best possible manner; 3) Create a new CSR fund, likely managed by DFAIT but with lines into CIDA technical expertise, that Canadian listed extractive firms can access as part of their development of CSR policies AND THEIR IMPLEMENTATION. Resources and expertise from the Canadian public sector would help influence though not direct the CSR programming of Canadian listed firms, help coordinate those programs with local and national development plans, and provide some guidance to firms who are following local law and regulations, as well as international voluntary codes, but who might need some extra help to navigate the complicated pathways to success, the win-win-win, for the company, the community, and the host government.  Much of the ground work is already established in the office of the CSR Counsellor as well as the centres of CSR excellence that are being funded. But partnership requires an investment of public resources, if only a minority stake, in the CSR initiatives of extractive firms.  Rather than telling Canadian firms what they should be doing, show them, support them, guide them.  There are risks, but an integrated, partnered CSR policy is going to offer more protection and more chances of success  to companies, communities, and host governments.
    That all said, there is some connection between the rise of Canadian extractives abroad and the failure at the UN. Canada loses when a mining or energy project goes bad; Canada does not gain much diplomatically if projects go smoothly. There will be fewer bad projects if CSR thinking is well developed, is integrated with local development plans, and the Canadian Government is seen as a partner rather than as a bystander. We may have increased (doubled, depending on your base year calculation) our overall ODA to Africa since 2002, but most of that goes through multilateral or untied bilateral channels that increasingly restricts even partial recognition of its source. Extractive projects are public, they are messy, and the reputational hit can be huge if they go off the rails. As per nearly all other OECD and BRIC countries, Canada must take a more active role in the support of its firms abroad, and CSR is one important economic and development route not yet pursued.