The Sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICADVI) will be held in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, on August 27 and 28, 2016. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, and more than 40 African delegations including the heads of states and governments will join the leaders of TICAD co-organizers, i.e., the African Union Commission, the United Nations, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank, to discuss the newly emerging challenges for development in Africa. The conference participants will also include more than 100 Japanese and African business leaders, and representatives from international organizations, advanced and emerging countries, aid agencies, civil societies and academia.
TICADVI will be the first time the TICAD summit meeting is held on the soil of the African continent. Since TICAD was inaugurated in 1993, the summit meetings have always been hosted by Japan, three times in Tokyo and twice in Yokohama. Due to the high level of interest among African countries of holding TICAD in Africa, it was decided to bring the conference there. In anticipation of the new initiatives that will be unveiled and toward a great success of the first TICAD in Africa, high level Japanese leaders from political, business and academic communities will travel to Nairobi in a delegation led by Mr. Abe to meet African leaders and open a new era of Japan-Africa partnerships.
At TICADV held in 2013 in Yokohama, the Government of Japan announced a national assistance package to Africa with public and private financing amounting to 3.2 trillion yen, including 1.4 trillion yen in official development assistance (ODA), for the five years from 2013 to 2017. Among the issues highlighted at the conference was the potential for business in Africa given the rapid economic and population growth. TICADV raised the interest in Africa among the Japanese business community, which has since increased its investment in Africa significantly.
JICA supports improvements to Africa’s business environment through initiatives it announced at TICADV, such as the African Business Education Initiative for Youth (ABE initiative), which provides educational opportunities at universities in Japan along with an internship at a Japanese company, and the Corridor Development Approach, which promotes infrastructure development and regional economic growth. In addition, JICA has continuously provided support through initiatives over the past decades in the areas of education, health, agriculture, the environment and peace building.
Although favorable conditions have made Africa attractive to business since the 2000s, there have been important changes in the three years following TICADV. One such change is a dramatic decline in global resource prices since fall 2014, accompanied by a drop in the continent’s annual economic growth rate from more than five percent in 2000 to 1.6 percent in 2016, according to a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) outlook. It should be noted that the annual growth rate of Kenya, an oil importer, is expected to remain higher than six percent (IMF outlook) as the falling price of oil is an advantage for oil-importing countries. After an extended period of rising commodity prices, this recent drop is therefore creating growth rate gaps among African countries according to the economic structure of each country. Another such change occurred with the unexpected Ebola outbreak in 2014. Although the World Health Organization announced the end of the outbreak in January 2016, the incident raised awareness of the vulnerability of Africa’s health system and the need to address weaknesses in the system by Africa and the international community as a whole. Another important change that has occurred is the expansion of violent extremism in Africa in the form of terrorism and attacks, bringing social instability to some African countries.
In response to these new challenges, the following three priority areas will be discussed at TICADVI:
i)Promoting Structural Economic Transformation through Economic Diversification and Industrialization
ii)Promoting Resilient Health Systems for Quality of Life
iii)Promoting Social Stability for Shared Prosperity
Based on its wealth of experience and knowledge of working on the ground in Africa, JICA supports the TICAD process through the implementation of projects and proposing solutions to address challenges. As a part of its contribution during TICADVI, JICA will host 18 TICADVI side events from August 25 to 28 in several hotels in Nairobi and the Kenyatta International Convention Centre, the main TICADVI venue. JICA will also join and support more than 10 other side events hosted by other institutions.
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