The Japanese prime minister said today in Tunis that Japan wants to help “quality growth” in Africa and announced “investments of 30 billion US dollars (about 30 billion euros)” over three years.
Japan gives “priority to an approach that values human investment and quality growth”, declared Fumio Kishida, in a speech opening the two days of work of the 8th Ticad Summit (Tokyo International Conference on African Development).
These funds, “private and public”, should be used for the “promotion of a green economy” that will benefit from an endowment of four billion dollars, said Kishida, who intervened by videoconference from Tokyo for having contracted covid-19. .
“To improve the lives of Africans, we will also provide up to $5 billion co-financed with the African Development Bank” (AfDB), Kishida added, including $1 billion for “debt restructuring.”
In the previous edition of Ticad, in 2019, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned Africa about the danger of accumulating “excessive” debts, alluding to China.
Beijing has steadily increased its influence in the region in recent years through its ambitious “Silk Roads” infrastructure project.
Japan also wants to help the continent meet the needs arising from the war in Ukraine, for an amount of 300 million dollars in co-financing with the ADB, for “food production and training of 200,000 people in agriculture.”
Twenty African leaders (heads of state or government) are present at Ticad, according to Tunisian sources, in addition to 5,000 people invited to a business forum and parallel conferences.
Among the heads of state present is the President of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embalo.
In his opening speech at the event, Tunisian President and summit host Kais Saied called for “the joint search for the means for Africans to realize the dreams and hopes of the first generation after independence.”
Said also praised the successful Japanese who were able to “achieve development while preserving their culture and traditions.”
The Senegalese head of state Macky Sall, current president of the African Union, paid tribute to the “benchmark partnership” with Japan, praising “concrete results in agriculture, health, education, hydraulics.”
Since its creation in 1993, the Ticad summits, co-organized with the United Nations, the World Bank and the African Union, have generated 26 development projects in 20 African countries.
For Sall, the African priorities are “the search for pharmaceutical sovereignty” with greater (local) production of vaccines and medicines and “food sovereignty”.
Africa has 60% of the arable land, water resources and a significant workforce, but wants “investments for beneficial cooperation”, he said.
The continent would also like “a reallocation of special drawing rights” from the IMF to help recover from the economic effects resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Sall argued.
The acting president of the African Union said that “Africa also calls for the suspension of debt interest by the G20” and asked for a place in this group of the 20 main economies “to ensure better support for the interests of the continent. ”.
According to Sall, this could take place “at the next G20 summit in Bali” in November.
Before starting, the conference suffered a diplomatic setback with the departure of the Moroccan delegation and the withdrawal of the ambassador to Tunisia, in reaction to the arrival in Ticad of the leader of the Polisario Front and president of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), Brahim Ghali, who fights for the independence of the territory of Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco.
Defending itself for having abandoned its “traditional neutrality”, Tunisia, in turn, called its ambassador in Morocco, assuring that the SADR had been invited by the African Union, an organization of which it is a member.
Macky Sall said that “he regrets the absence of Morocco due to the lack of consensus on an issue of representation”, hoping that “this problem finds a solution”.
Ticad is politically important for President Kais Said, the protagonist a year ago of a palace coup by which he assumed all powers, in addition to the economic one, because Tunisia in crisis hopes to attract investors to 80 projects that could generate 35,700 jobs.
Source: Observadora
