Celebrated Canadian soldier William Grant Stairs helped King Leopold II of Belgium conquer the resource-rich Katanga region of the Congo. Known for his heartless brutality, Stairs headed a heavily armed mission that swelled to 2,000. The goal of the expedition was to extend Leopold’s authority over Katanga to get a piece of the copper, ivory and gold trade.

Banro operates in a region that has seen incredible violence over the past two decades and the secretive company has been accused of fuelling the conflict. In 1996 Banro paid $3.5 million for 47 mining concessions that covered more than one million hectares of land in Congo’s North and South Kivu.

The mass killings in Rwandan in 1994 are often invoked inside and outside the country for ulterior purposes. In Canada, the story is part of developing a “do-gooder” foreign policy mythology designed to lull the nation into backing interventionist policies. More generally, a highly simplistic account of Rwanda ‘94 has repeatedly been invoked to justify liberal imperialism, particularly the responsibility to protect doctrine.

For more than a century Canadians have gone abroad to do “good” in poorer parts of the world. Whether they spurred positive change or simply became foreign agents should be of interest to international non-governmental organizations.

Friday, February 24 is the anniversary of the 1966 coup against leading Pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah. Canada played a key role. Following the coup, the Canadian High Commissioner in Accra C.E. McGaughey, wrote that “a wonderful thing has happened for the West in Ghana and Canada has played a worthy part.”

Canada’s announcement that it intends to send 600 troops on a peacekeeping mission in Africa has elicited little enlightened discussion about Ottawa’s history in the continent. In addition to Canadian extensive mining interests, the country has a growing military footprint in Africa over the past decade - working closely with the new United States’ Africa Command (AFRICOM).

Canada’s position towards the African liberation struggles of the 1970s and 1980s should influence how people view deploying troops to the continent today. This history – and the media’s distortion of it – suggests the need for healthy dose of skepticism towards Ottawa’s intentions.

Last month Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan undertook a weeklong five-nation tour ostensibly to "strengthen relationships with African partners." A notable figure on that trip was General Romeo Dallaire, a close ally of the “Butcher of the Great Lakes”, Rwanda's Paul Kagame. Loud expressions of Canada’s benevolence to Africa hide Ottawa’s chequered history of self-serving policies - often with bloody consequences - presented as altruism.

The Toronto-based shoemaker took advantage of European colonialism to rapidly set up across the continent, squeezing out local footwear producers, working with apartheid South Africa and even reaching out to Uganda’s Idi Amin.

There are 2,600 Mauritanian workers employed by Kinross Gold of whom 1,041 are permanent, costing the company $36 million, while there are 130 expatriate employees who cost $43 million.