As the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development approaches, observers of this flagship for Japan’s relations with Africa have raised questions about its relevance and future direction., Satoshi Shimoda, a senior staff writer of the broadsheet intimated that certain senior Japanese government officials are desperate to see the end of the Ticad and hope it will cease to exist by 2028, when Ticad X is expected to be convened.
Although the Japanese government orchestrates and single-handedly funds and manages the Ticad, the initiative is in principle co-organised with the United Nations, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the African Union Commission and other relevant partners.
Ticad VII in 2019 attracted 53 leaders of 42 African countries, and drew more than 10,000 attendees, including representatives of 52 countries outside Africa , representatives of 108 international and regional organisations, and representatives of the private sector and NGOs. The balance of Japan’s FDI in Africa, which stood at approximately $12-billion at the end of 2013, has continued to decline, and had fallen to about $4.8-billion at the end of 2020, compared to $65-billion from the UK, $60-billion from France, $49-billion from the Netherlands, $48-billion from the US, and $43-billion from China.
The problem is that since its inception in the early 1990s, the Ticad has been micromanaged by Mofa. The Ticad was the brainchild of senior officials of the foreign ministry, but more importantly, Japan’s prominent economic ministries, the Ministry of International Trade and Industries and the Ministry of Finance, were not particularly involved in the planning and organisation of the platform.
Consequently, Japanese aid to Africa, even in the context of the Ticad, was, until 2013, largely limited to the provision of humanitarian assistance. Subsequently, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tried to use the forum in the interests of Abenomics, the policies his government devised to redeem Japan from its protracted economic stagnation.