Newsletter No. 984
Editorial-Opinion
April 20, 2008

 

SHINICHI KITAOKA ON THE NEED TO REVISE JAPANESE POLICIES ON AFRICA

Shinichi Kitaoka is currently a professor at Tokyo University; but he also served as Japanese ambassador to the United Nations from April 2004 to September 2006. He appeared more often in the first year of the Shingetsu Newsletter than he has recently.

Kitaoka comes, in my judgment, from the ideological hard right in Japan. However, the piece that he published today in the Yomiuri Shinbun is, for the most part, pretty reasonable and moderate in its arguments. We have already discussed many of the themes that he addresses, but this is still a cogent and worthwhile opinion article. Furthermore, his notion that gasoline tax revenues should be used to increase foreign aid to Africa is unique.

Africa Needs a Lot More Assistance from Japan
By Shinichi Kitaoka

The leaders of 43 of Africa's 53 countries are scheduled to participate in the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV), the latest in a series of multilateral forums inaugurated in 1993 and held every five years since then. TICAD IV will take place in Yokohama from May 28 to 30 and will be of particular significance since aid to the continent is to be taken up as one of major topics at the Group of Eight summit meeting at Toyakocho, Hokkaido in July.

On this occasion, I want to review why relations with Africa are so important.

First, there is an economic factor. In recent years, the African economy has been faring well, growing at an annual average rate of more than 5 percent in the past five years. Behind this economic upturn is the ongoing surge in prices of natural resources and food, which has led to more and more countries establishing a presence on the continent in pursuit of natural resources. Those African nations that are not blessed with gifts of the Earth, however, remain in dire straits.

The second reason is a diplomatic factor. Africa's 53 countries often act in unison. They account for more than one-fourth of the 192 member countries of the United Nations, a fact that makes it crucial to win their support in reforming the U.N. Security Council and resolving other global issues.

Since around 2001, industrialized countries have increased their aid to Africa. For its part, China also has been so active that it inaugurated a China-Africa summit -- similar to the TICAD series -- in November 2006, inviting a large number of African leaders to Beijing. However, China's inroads into Africa have often been criticized for being too focused on crude oil and other natural resources. China has remained on good terms with the Sudanese government for the sake of securing crude oil supplies. Indeed, Beijing has been virtually defending Khartoum despite a barrage of international criticism over the Darfur conflict.

As a natural consequence of their long history of being discriminated against, African countries are extremely sensitive to discrimination. They like countries, such as Japan, that have no history of colonizing Africa and also are willing to have dialogue on an equal footing. At the same time, Japan continues to be respected as one of the world's first countries to modernize rapidly while preserving its traditions.

Don't Disappoint African Leaders

Nonetheless, it should be noted that African leaders are pragmatic. If Japan fails to pledge substantive assistance to the leaders of the 43 African countries gathering in Japan after traveling such a long distance, those leaders may feel so disappointed and outraged that future stagings of TICAD could prove difficult.

Japan was the largest provider of official development assistance in the world in the 1990s, but in 2001 it slipped into second place -- after the United States. Japan was ranked third in 2006, when it was overtaken by Britain, and fell to fifth place in 2007, when France and Germany moved ahead of it. Considering that the economies of Britain and France are about one-third the size of the Japanese economy, the economic aid burden on one Japanese is less than one-third that on every citizen of Britain or France.

How should Japan rectify this situation? Let's begin with ODA. In 2005, Japan promised to double the amount of its ODA loans to Africa, a goal it has gone on to achieve. However, most of the aid has been extended to relieve borrowers from existing debt redemption burdens, which means there has been no increase in new net aid. So far, Asian countries have been the main recipients of Japanese ODA, mostly in the form of official credits, better known as "yen loans." But it is a Japanese government principle to extend yen loans to countries with good solvency and refrain from providing such credits to countries subject to debt relief measures. As a result, in the case of Africa, Japan has often had no choice but to offer grant aid or technical assistance to recipient countries there rather than yen loans. Therefore, Japan should first increase its grant aid and technical assistance to African countries. As for grant aid, recipient countries are required in principle to procure goods necessary for related projects from donor countries. Taking advantage of this principle, the government may be able to proceed with aid programs for African countries in tandem with Japanese businesses that are interested in entering the African market. At the same time, it is necessary to raise the amount of yen loans. The bottleneck in Africa for economic development is the underdeveloped state of its infrastructure. Yen loans can be effective in facilitating infrastructure development in Africa. To that end, the government should review its criteria for extending yen loans and revise its existing policy to enable itself to lend official credits to countries that have had to rely on debt relief measures yet have a high redemption potential thanks to other specific factors.

According to Yomiuri Shinbun reports on April 12 and 13, the government now seems willing to cooperate more closely with Japanese businesses in planning and implementing ODA programs -- a measure that is already the norm in many foreign countries -- and ease its yen loan conditions. It will be worthwhile if the government does actually take these steps.

Use Parts of Road Tax Revenue

Where can the government find fiscal resources to increase ODA to Africa? The government has recently decided to use road-related tax revenues for general expenditure in the future. Once the government is able to reinstate these road-related taxes, they will generate as much as 2.6 trillion yen a year for fiscal use. I would like to see some of these revenues -- even a tiny portion of, say, 100 billion yen -- earmarked for assistance to Africa.

Japanese taxpayers do not have much interest in ODA to Africa or ODA programs as a whole for that matter. This is chiefly because they seem unconvinced that Japanese economic assistance is actually beneficial to recipient countries.

However, I would like to point to a successful aid project -- the Millennium Village Project, which is currently spearheaded mainly by the U.N. Development Program. Under the project, a certain number of the most impoverished villages in Africa are chosen -- 79 villages in 10 countries have been designated in the inaugural round -- to provide them with assistance in integrated ways without the involvement of their respective national governments. The project specifically employs scientific approaches and ensures the participation of village residents in the fields of agriculture, health care (providing Japanese-developed mosquito nets that have proved to be particularly effective against malaria), primary education (including school lunch services), hygiene (digging wells) and infrastructure development. Much of this project is modeled on Japan's economic development. In terms of financial assistance, too, the Millennium Village Project was launched with the backing of the U.N. Trust Fund for Human Security, established with contributions from Japan. The project has been a great success. Japan would be well advised to extend effective assistance in projects similar to the Millennium Village Project.

Japan should also increase its participation in U.N.-orchestrated peacekeeping operations. PKO missions, which are not necessarily dangerous, present good opportunities for building close relationships with host governments and raising the local population's awareness of Japan while deepening interaction and cooperation with troops from other participating countries. These operations also provide good practical training for Self-Defense Forces personnel. At present, Japan is ranked around 80th in the world in terms of PKO involvement -- the lowest among the world's leading nations. China has troops in all existing PKO missions in Africa, while Japanese SDF troops are nowhere to be found in any of them. This situation should be corrected.

In people-to-people exchanges. Japan should deepen interaction and cooperation among people, including students, in Japan and African countries. For example, Japanese youths who stay in poor African villages for six months will realize how affluent Japan is and be more willing to do something good for the world.

Finally, it should be emphasized that Japan is a democracy that loves freedom, peace and human rights -- it is a nation based on such universal values. If Japan is serious about its commitment to upholding these values, it cannot leave the issue of poverty in Africa as it is.

Japan is being caught up by China in political and economic terms. To make up for this relative setback, Japan should seek more global solidarity. In other words, Japan should become a global presence, a key to its future diplomacy toward the rest of Asia. With these recommendations in mind, the government should do its utmost in conducting a successful TICAD IV.

COMMENTARY

1) From John Edward Philips of Hirosaki University on April 21, 2008:

This is a good analysis of Japan's interests in Africa in the order they are seen by the MOFA, i.e. economic and diplomatic, in competition with China, especially for natural resources. I thought the most interesting part was the call for more exchanges. Although exposing Japanese to life in African villages may work, as Professor Kitaoka hopes, to end the absolutely insane conviction of many Japanese that Japan is a small, poor country, it may only reinforce their belief that Africans are inferior to the extent that they are incapable of developing. But Japanese are exposed to African poverty regularly on their televisions, so it may not have a significant impact at all. At the very least I think that it would make Japanese more aware of just how nice African people are. I was disappointed that Professor Kitaoka did not call for increasing the numbers of African graduate students to the levels of Asian graduate students, but human resources training in general didn't seem to have occurred to him. I found the most hopeful part of his analysis to be his call for Japan to move beyond mere economic diplomacy into principled support for democracy and human rights. Japan is not an ideological country, the way the United States (or even Saudi Arabia) is, and ideological concerns must necessarily lie lower on the Japanese list of priorities. That doesn't mean that they need be totally absent, however, especially now that Japan's economy is more mature than it was decades ago, and it need not focus so relentlessly and exclusively on its own economic growth.