Conversation summary delivered by Toshiro Ozawa Japan Ambassador to South Africa, Mike Spicer CEO of Business Leadership South Africa and follow up research by Kizito Okechukwu.
The depth of condolences, sympathy and support received by Japan after the massive quake across Africa provided clear testimony of Japan’s contribution to the continent’s economy. Based on the most severe experiences, Japan will move to build a new society which is more resilient to natural disasters. Japan will share with TICAD partners its experiences and lessons dearly learned from this calamity, and will discuss with them, with an even deeper level of understanding and compassion, ways to help Africa become more resilient, itself, to natural disasters such as floods or drought which often afflict many parts of the continent.
TICAD- Tokyo International Conference on African Development is a forum where some African countries together with Japan deliberate and dialogue on investment relations and has recorded immense success since its inception. The Government of Japan pledged to double its annual amount of Official Development Assistance to Africa-the average amount of US$0.9billion per year during 2003-2007- to a target of US$1.8 billion by 2012. US$1.68 billion was disbursed in 2009, following on the US$1.75 billion disbursed in 2008. Furthermore, the total amount disbursed in 2010 reached US$2.05 billion (provisional figures), which exceeded the target amount for 2012.
Africa’s growth rate was considerably higher than that of developed countries still affected by the global crisis. According to the World Bank’s report “Global Economic Prospects 2011”, this is primarily the result of high prices of oil and minerals and increased level of foreign direct investment. There were also reductions in poverty rates and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals in many parts of the continent. After the Second TICAD IV Ministerial Follow-up meeting that was held in Tanzania May 2010, concrete measures announced by Japan at the meeting, which were designed to boost recovery from the economic crisis, have been implemented successfully.
Various regional infrastructure development initiatives for Africa have been taken up. Through the leadership of the AU and NEPAD, the 15th Ordinary session of the African Union in July 2010 agreed to integrate several existing initiatives into the Programme for Infrastructure Development (PIDA) in Africa and endorsed the framework until the end of 2011. Currently, detailed investigations are underway in order to integrate national projects into regional and continental projects and to secure funding, targeting energy, water, transport, and ICT. In order to ensure consistency with PIDA, the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA), a platform for donors including Japan, is currently formulating a strategic business plan and moving ahead with donor coordination in individual projects within sectoral working groups. Japan is also involved in many other projects like Infrastructure development, Trade, Investment and Tourism in which Japan currently boosts over 484 Japanese private sector companies which have opened offices/branches and local Japanese corporations operating independently or jointly in Africa, which provides roughly 200,000 Africans’ workplaces.
In recognition that the basis of nation building lies in the personal empowerment of people, the TICAD process have been implementing a large number of projects which includes community development, provision of basic education, health facilities and promotion of good governance and peace in some parts of Africa thus far based on the concept of “human security”.
South Africa and Africa should take the opportunity that Japan presents; “having provided over US$1.2 billion in financing over the past few years in Africa, the growth of Intra-African trade is crucially important for trade in Africa” says Toshiro Ozawa Ambassador of Japan to South Africa.
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