Five decades of partnership between Canada and AKDN offer a guide to building alliances that endure

With international cooperation in freefall, the question of enduring partnerships – and why they have worked – has rarely felt more urgent. For Canada, one answer points in a clear direction: that the "variable geometry" Prime Minister Mark Carney championed at Davos earlier this year – different coalitions for different challenges, built on common values and interests – is key to navigating today’s fragmenting world.

It is an approach that, over five decades, has found pragmatic expression in Canada’s steadfast and enduring cooperation with the Ismaili Imamat, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and Aga Khan Foundation Canada (AKFC).

A partnership based on shared principles

One early articulation of this was a 1981 start-up grant to the Aga Khan University School of Nursing and Midwifery – a collaboration involving Canada, AKDN and McMaster University. That investment enabled a new institution to establish the resources and standing necessary to transform nursing education in Pakistan, raising the professional status of nurses, amplifying women’s voices in health policymaking at the local, national and global levels, and eventually expanding access to skilled care to Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Afghanistan, Syria and Egypt.

Engaging Canadians to act

One of the most distinctive aspects of Canada’s relationship with AKDN is the way ordinary Canadians engage as active partners. The World Partnership Walk – launched in 1985 and now Canada’s largest public movement to address the root causes of poverty and inequality – is the clearest expression of this.

Each year, the Walk rallies thousands of Canadians in communities across the country, equipping participants not just to fundraise but to act as informed global citizens. Since the Walk’s founding, Canadians have contributed more than CAD $150 million to AKDN programmes that support communities around the world through quality, contextually relevant initiatives.

One such initiative is the Madrasa Early Childhood Programme (MECP), created in collaboration with governments and local communities across East Africa as the Walk in Canada was gaining momentum. During MECP’s initial years, the Aga Khan Foundation was its only source of funding, yet by 1992 support from donor agencies grew – with Global Affairs Canada, then known as the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), amongst the first to back the initiative.

Since then, Canada and Canadians have supported these local efforts to develop, refine, expand and sustain work in over 200 early childhood development centres across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda – training over 8,000 teachers and reaching over a million young children.

Beyond the Walk, AKFC's International Youth Fellowship – established with the Government of Canada in 1989 – offers young Canadians direct experience in international development. Since its founding, almost 600 fellows have completed intensive training and overseas placements in Africa and Asia, working alongside local institutions on community-led initiatives.

This investment in the next generation is central to much of AKDN’s work and a priority for His Highness Prince Rahim Aga Khan. Speaking at the inauguration of the Aga Khan Academy in Maputo, Mozambique in 2022, His Highness highlighted the impact young people can have on their communities:

“Throughout your studies and your youth, adults will tell you that the future is ahead of you. I want to tell you that the future is what you leave behind you, shaped by every one of your actions and your statements and your decisions. The future follows behind you in the path that you choose.”

Jenna Mulji, a fellow from the 2023-24 cohort who served at the Aga Khan Hospital in Kisumu, Kenya, and who has since entered medical school at the University of Alberta, is just one young person whose path mirrors this sentiment.

“While I completed this experience in Kenya to learn more about health systems in another part of the world,” Mulji reflects, “I was overwhelmed with the passion people had for their homes and reflected on the importance of change at the local level made by those who directly grew up in the communities they are serving.”

The geometry of lasting cooperation

Mulji’s experience brings the arc of this partnership into focus. The variable geometry that Prime Minister Carney describes as Canada's navigational tool for an uncertain world operates at every level; it is as much about governments building diverse partnerships beyond diplomatic coalitions as it is about citizens building connections to their communities and to the world at large.

This is what over 50 years of cooperation between Canada and AKDN has demonstrated: that the most resilient partnerships are those in which values and practice remain aligned, from the policy table all the way to the communities they exist to serve.

Learn more about our programmes and how to get involved.