Japan’s talks with African leaders this week aim to boost its presence on the continent and offer an alternative to investments by an increasingly assertive China. Japan wants the latest round of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) to help ‘launch impactful Japanese action’ in the continent, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.
The meeting, scheduled this year on August 28-30, has been organised every five years since 1993 in Japan or in Africa. China announced $60 billion in development funding for Africa last year—a figure twice as much as Japan pledged at the 2016 TICAD meeting, according to a global newswire.Japan's talks with African leaders this week aim to boost its presence on the continent and offer an alternative to investments by an increasingly assertive China. Japan wants the latest round of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) to help 'launch impactful Japanese action' in the continent, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.#
Japan will seek to position itself as a quality partner, offering high-impact loans and other assistance without the strings attached to loans offered by China that have been controversial in the past, analysts say. Japan wants to drive Africa's growth "with its high-quality infrastructure development, science technology and innovation", Abe said recently.
TICAD is a good opportunity for Japan to send a message about "its practical, well-planned lending", according to Sawaka Takazaki, deputy director of the Middle East and Africa division at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), a government-backed trade-promotion body.
The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, offering hundreds of billions of dollars in financing for infrastructure projects, has been eagerly embraced in many parts of Africa, but has attracted criticism for favouring Chinese companies and workers over local economies, saddling nations with debt, and ignoring rights and environmental issues.
Japan says it will offer more favourable financing, without the exclusive rights agreements often baked into China's projects.
Among the loans Tokyo is expected to announce is 400 billion yen funding for developing renewable energy projects, a Japanese newspaper reported earlier this month. Tokyo and the African Development Bank are also expected to jointly announce plans to offer more than 300 billion yen in loans for quality and transparent infrastructure development, the newspaper reported.
While Japan's exports to Africa last year were down more than 27 per cent from 2008 figures, China has seen a nearly 50 per cent surge in exports to the continent in the past decade, the Japan External Trade Organisation said.
More than 150 Japanese firms are taking part in an expo on the sidelines, hoping to drum up business. (DS)
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