We’ve just concluded a very busy week in Japan with our participation in the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in Yokohama. More than 40 African heads of state attended the meeting, which has been held every five years since 1993.

ONE was involved in a number of high profile events throughout the week aimed at turning up the pressure on the government and engaging the broader Japanese public on issues of extreme poverty. This included several print and television interviews, the launch of a campaign film featuring major Japanese and international personalities all speaking Japanese (watch this space for more), bilateral meetings with African leaders and Japanese officials (including Prime Minister Fukuda), and guest editing a special Africa edition of Asahi Shimbun, the world’s second largest circulation newspaper. We also used the occasion of TICAD to publicly launch ONE in Japan – the first country after the US – with a Japan specific action. You can check out the ONE Japan website at www.one.org/jp. Finally, we participated in a human sculpture event where the internationally renowned artist Anthony Gormley gathered over a thousand volunteers in a park to create the outline of a human body which he then photographed. All these events together have helped create a very important public debate in Japan.

You can also read a paper we released in advanced of TICAD titled, “Turning Consensus in Action” which makes recommendations to the Japanese government and the G8 on improving health, agriculture, education and aid delivery in Africa.

The final outcomes of TICAD fell short of our hopes. Prime Minister Fukuda made a headline-grabbing announcement that Japan would double its ODA to Africa, but details revealed that the announcement was not as good as it sounded. Japan will only be doubling its bilateral aid (which amounts to an increase of roughly $1 billion) and over a long, five year time period (between 2008 and 2012). They did make positive commitments on infrastructure and investment, announcing $4 billion in low interest loans to Africa for infrastructure development and a $2.5 billion facility to help Japanese firms invest more in Africa. On the agriculture front, Japan said it will help African nations double rice production within a decade.

Japan announced a new contribution to the Global Fund, but again, it was less than we hoped for, totaling only $560 million in “the coming years.” This amounts to an additional $100 million more per year. We were hoping for at least $1 billion over three years, which would represent a true doubling of their current support.

While we’re disappointed with the outcome, we’re going to continue to push hard for more from Japan before the G8 Summit in July. We’ll be watching closely next week when officials convene for a high level meeting on food security in Rome. Prime Minister Fukuda will be in attendance and we think this is an area ripe for more Japanese leadership.

-Ben Hubbard

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 3:26 pm and is filed under TICAD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.