Japan resumes its wooing of Africa, a counter to China’s efforts
- Japan, which began developmental programmes in the 1990s, has been eclipsed in recent years by China, now Africa’s leading trade partner
- Pledge to invest US$30 billion on the continent includes a focus on training Africans to run their economies
Japan will help Africa “urgently deal with issues such as … unfair and opaque development finance”, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told the eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Tunisia last weekend.
Observers considered that an apparent swipe at China’s lending practices, which Japan and other Group of 7 members have criticised as burdening countries with “debt traps”.
China’s foreign ministry denies those claims, saying, “the so-called Chinese debt trap is a lie made up by the US and some other Western countries to deflect responsibility and blame”.
W. Gyude Moore, a former minister of public works in Liberia, said Kishida’s statement to TICAD seemed intended to contrast Japan’s approach to lending with others.
“Because Japan usually acts in concert with the West, it’s clear that the ‘other’ here is China,” Moore said.
TICAD, which convenes every three years, was never conceptualised as a counter to China.