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This coming October, President Mbeki will pay a state visit to Japan. The Government of Japan attaches great importance to this visit and sees it as a golden opportunity to further enhance our bilateral relations. During the President's visit to Japan, the first round of Japan-South Africa Business Forum will be launched. Thus, South Africa will become the 12th official dialogue partner for the Japanese Keidanren (the Federation of Economic Organisations). This implies that South Africa is officially recognized as a very important trade / investment partner by the Japanese business circle.
These are not isolated incidents, but are part of a tremendous tidal wave of rapidly growing Japan-Africa relations, which developed in recent years. President Mbeki has just come back from Genoa, Italy, with very positive results from dialogues with the G8 leaders. And Japan is very pleased with this as she was the initiator of this dialogue, which started in Tokyo on the eve of the G8 Okinawa Summit last year. We were honoured on that occasion with the presence of President Mbeki together with Presidents Obasanjo and Bouteflika from Africa.
This was followed by Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's visit to Africa in January this year. This was the first ever-official visit by an incumbent Japanese Prime Minister to Sub Saharan Africa. You might recall that Prime Minister Mori delivered a comprehensive policy speech to present Japan's New Diplomacy towards Africa. Thus both countries are exchanging mutual visits at summit level as frequently as almost half-year intervals. In this context, the Nigerian President Obasanjo also made an official visit to Japan last May, marking yet another important step forward to further strengthening bilateral relations as well as bonds between Japan and Africa as a whole.
Now, I wish to introduce to you, very briefly, the evolution of Japanese involvement in the African continent.
Regrettably, Japan did not deploy any meaningful diplomatic activities in this period, except to establish diplomatic relations with the newly independent African states. It is noteworthy, however, that Japan had already opened her consular office in Cape Town in 1918 and this was the first consular / diplomatic mission in Sub Saharan Africa. This shows, very interestingly, that South Africa has been the gate-way to the continent for Japan since such far-off days. Apart from this, however, we waited until around 1960, the year of African Independence, before establishing embassies. The first embassy we opened in Sub Saharan Africa was in Ethiopia in 1958, followed by those in Ghana in 1959, and in Nigeria and the Congo in 1960. However, by the late 1970's Japan was already operating a good number of embassy networks in the continent and was busy with the opening of and the maintaining of diplomatic relations with a large number of newly independent African states.
It can be stated that from 1978 Japan emerged as a major player in the area of economic development assistance. 1998 was the first year in which the Japanese ODA Mid-term Programme came into play, after it was launched in 1977, on her own initiative. This ambitious programme targeted at doubling Japans official development assistance volume to the developing world over three years from 1978 to 1980, with its 1977 volume as a base line. And Japan successfully accomplished this programme in 1980 and increased her ODA by more than double, namely 2.3 times. Through this implementation process, Sub Saharan Africa proved a most remarkable beneficiary of the Programme by quadrupling its receipt of Japans ODA over three years, namely from $56 million in 1977 to $ 223 million in 1980. Commensurate with the increase in volume, Sub Saharan Africa's regional shares in terms of the global destination of Japan's ODA also doubled from only 6 % in 1977 to 11% in 1980. Even after this initial period, Japan has constantly increased her ODA to Africa, maintaining 10~11% of Sub Saharan Africas regional share. In recent years the ODA volume allocated to Africa reached the level of $1 billion. Out of interest, Japan has been the top ODA donor of the world over the past 10 years since 1991. The Japanese ODA amount, including both bilateral and multilateral assistance in 1999, was $15.3 billion.
This extension of increased ODA was the beginning of Japans meaningful involvement in Africa. I wish to draw your attention here to the fact that our involvement in Africa was by no means motivated by any political ambitions. The truth of the matter is that while pursuing our sincere commitment to doubling our ODA and disbursing it to the most needed recipients, we one day found ourselves, rather surprisingly, as a major ODA player in Africa.
Though playing an important role in African development for many years, Japan was cautious against any involvement in African conflicts. It may be rather natural for Japan to take this attitude, in the light of the complexity of this matter as well as Japans lack of historical experiences. Japan, however, changed her policy in this respect in the late 1980s. In 1988, the Japanese Prime Minister N. Takeshita delivered an important policy speech on Japan's contribution to the international society in London during his official visit to Europe. He specified three major areas of contribution; ODA, Cultural exchange, and Peace Making, of which the last two were new.
Following this speech, Japan dispatched, for the first time, an election observer delegation to Namibia in 1989, after the conflict settlement. This was followed by the dispatching of personnel to Angola in 1992, and Nigeria in 1997. Though these actions may be modest in scale compared with other countries' contributions, these new steps paved the way for a more active Japanese contribution to other regions. In 1993 Japan took her action into a new phase and dispatched military personnel, namely the Self Defense Force Mission, to Mozambique, although this type of action had for many years been considered as rather taboo in the Japanese political context. It was followed by a massive dispatch of 400 more military personnel to Rwanda in 1994.
Then, Japan started to make financial contributions amounting to $1.5 million (from 1996 to 2000) to the OAU Peace Fund to cover the direct costs of the negotiation process for conflict settlement. This is only part of the Japanese financial contribution to various items relating directly or indirectly to peace making, including the costs for clearing land mines, food assistance for refugees and refugee camps, among many others. If all of these are combined, the amount of Japan's financial assistance for peace making from 1994 to 2000 reaches $600 million.
Another area on which Japan places emphasis, is the organizing of various international conferences and seminars for peace making. We organized, for instance, the international seminar on The Peace and Development of Africa in Tokyo under the co-sponsorship with the United Nations University in 1995. Since then, almost every year, we have been organizing a number of seminars of high quality on various topics relating to conflict prevention or peace-making. The subject of the latest seminar was, by the way, "The Return of Children Soldiers and their Rehabilitation."
One thing I would like to make particular reference to is the subject of "peace-keeping operations and constraints deriving from the Japanese Constitution." Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution stipulates, "& the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. & land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained." It is a very delicate political question on how to interpret the relationship between this article of the Constitution and the international obligation under the UN Charter. With this contentious argument behind us, personnel of the Japanese Self Defense forces dispatched, are not involved at present in peace enforcement activities, but only in logistical operations as non-combatant personnel. If any break-through in this regard is made, it would pave the way for new possibilities by enabling Japanese personnel to become more involved in PKF operations.
Japan organized the Tokyo International Conference of African Development (TICAD) in 1993. Although Japan has already been one of the major ODA donors to Africa for many years, as I have mentioned above, she has been rather cautious in taking any international initiative, as far as African affairs is concerned. Then what was the motivation for Japan to take such an initiative? Japan felt that it was her own responsibility to call upon the international society to extend renewed attention to Africa and reverse the trend in which almost every traditional major player had seemingly lost interest in Africa after the end of Cold war. As I stated before, Japanese ODA to Africa has not been motivated by any political or strategic consideration of the cold war structure, instead it was justified by Japans consideration of the interdependence between nations and for humanitarian reasons. Thus Japan has never imposed any political conditions on its recipients, regardless of whether the country belongs to an Eastern or a Western camp. After the end of the cold war, Japan found herself as one of the few donors maintaining unchanged ODA levels, while most of the traditional major donors lost interest and their grounds for doing so.
Under such circumstances, Japan decided to take the international initiative for the first time in her relations with Africa and organize a large-scale international conference for the development of Africa. This TICAD was followed by TICAD II which was held in 1998. 169 countries and organizations participated in TICAD II. This number was 50% more than that of the first TICAD. In forthcoming December, Japan will again host the ministerial level meeting within the TICAD framework to prepare for TICAD III which will most probably be held in 2003. It should be underlined that one of the top items on the agenda for this ministerial meeting will be the New African Initiative.
Japanese Prime Minister Y. MORI made an official visit to Africa this last January, which was the first ever visit to Sub Saharan Africa by a Japanese incumbent Prime Minister. Though Japan has strengthened her relations with Africa through development assistance and cooperation toward peace making, the reality was that no top leader of Japan came to Africa to demonstrate its political presence at a summit level. Since you are receiving so many top leaders from every corner of the world, you may have taken the Japanese Prime Minister's visit to this country as a part of business as usual. This however, has a very historic meaning for Japanese diplomacy, because the Prime Minister's visit was a demonstration of the way in which Japan has positioned Africa high up on her agenda for her global diplomacy and it defines African affairs as those to be handled at summit level diplomacy. Thus Prime Minister Y. Mori delivered Japan's first ever comprehensive policy speech about Japanese diplomacy toward Africa here in South Africa and elaborated her policy framework in detailed terms.
Then you may ask why Japan is so eagerly committing herself in Africa despite its remote geographical distance and lack of historical ties. You may have a good understanding about the involvement in Africa, for instance, by the UK or France which have long and complex historical backgrounds, or even by the United States where more than 10% of the population is of African origin. This is not the case for Japan.
The importance of Africa in international relations can be justified in a number of ways. These include its richness in mineral resources, its future economic potential and its voting numbers in such international organizations as the United Nations. These may be relevant and valid arguments. However, I think that these points are not convincing enough to explain Japan's new African diplomacy.
Taking natural resources for instance, nobody denies the importance of Africa's richness in a number of key metal resources, including platinum, chromium, vanadium and diamonds, of which Africa has 40% of the Worlds production shares. Uranium is also an important item at 26% of the worlds production shares. These are, however, basically market commodities which are available at commercial terms in the market. This is particularly true after the end of the cold war and considering the political stability of South Africa. The direct impact on the national economy of these metals is not of the same magnitude as oil, though each rare metal has a very important value for specific areas of industry, such as information technology products. Japanese diplomacy towards the Middle East, in particular the Gulf countries is quite often justified by the fact that Japan depends on the Gulf countries for more than 70% of her oil import. The analogy of oil resources is not valid for other mineral resources.
With regard to Africas future economic potential, I agree that it has great potential for economic development and prosperity in the future. With this belief in mind, Japan is continuously extending development assistance to Africa. Japan stands for Afro-optimism. However, the future potential is not the reality at present. As far as the reality appearing in the statistics is concerned, Africa shares only 1% of the world trade and investment. In light of such economic weight in the global economy of Africa, it is rather difficult to justify Japans deep commitment in Africa from an economic and commercial point of view.
Thirdly, regarding Africas voting power in the UN, in the case of Japan, this may be the most convincing of the three explanations. But if Japan's African diplomacy was based on this reason, Japan wouldnt have to commit herself in African affairs so strongly. She would only need to pin-point her diplomatic offensive to countries that have a vote, at a specific time and in a cost-effective manner. This rationale does not justify Japan's deep and fully-fledged involvement in Africa.
Therefore the traditional reasons why countries may be interested in Africa do not explain Japans strong commitment to the continent. I will now elaborate on why Africa and her people are of such importance to Japan.
I believe that Africa can be described as a mirror of Japan. If Japan would wish to, and be allowed to stay as the only regional power in the Asian Pacific, it would still keep an appropriate distance from Africa. But if Japan would, instead, be destined to and desire to be a responsible member of the international community, Japan should consider Africa as a key for her global diplomacy. It is for the Japanese people themselves to decide on either destination as their future course for Japan. And I believe that the launching of the policy speech on "Japan's Contribution to the International Society" by Prime Minister N. Takeshita in 1988 reflected the maturity of Japanese people in that they opted for shouldering global responsibility. And Japan has been pursuing this through trial and error over the past years. The more seriously Japan considers her global responsibilities, the more clearly Japan comes to recognize the importance of Africa. Nobody can afford to neglect Africa while striving for the prosperity and stability of the world, especially when dealing with the reality of Africa's weight in the world. Africa constitutes a quarter of the worlds states, it occupies 20% of the world surface and shares 10% of the worlds population. Africa is really the key to the 21st century's world prosperity and stability, as it has two sides to it; a great potential for economic development on the one hand and the present plight of poverty and instability on the other.
Japan has been more and more clearly developing and shaping this part of her diplomacy. And this was concretized in the realization of the first ever visit of a Japanese Prime Minister to Africa. And this is also the very reason why Prime Minister Y. Mori stated in his policy speech delivered here in South Africa, "There will be no stability and prosperity in the world in the 21st century unless the problems of Africa are resolved."
Now let us examine the Japanese-African relations from the other side, namely that of Africa. Why is Japan important for Africa? You are in the better position than I am to respond to this question. Nevertheless, I, as the Ambassador of Japan, would like to consider three points in this respect.
The first is the economic weight of Japan in the world, including her large scale ODA performances. To try to show you the world GDP structure, the total world GDP amounting to $30 trillion is roughly composed of $8 trillion from the US, $7 trillion from the EU, and $4 trillion from Japan. Thus only three entities constitute more than 60 % of the global GDP. Though the GDP volume in the US dollar terms of the US and Japan is respectively shifting depending on the dollar-yen exchange rate, the total of the GDPs of the US and Japan combined is constant in keeping a 40% share of the global GDP. When Africa considers its economic relations with the global economy, I may be rather safe in reminding you of the importance of the weight of the Japanese economy.
Here I have to confess that the current level of economic ties of trade and investment between Japan and Africa is not so impressive. It is more or less the average of those between Africa and the rest of the world which is around 1% of the world trade and investment respectively. And in our case, the feature is that South Africa shares more than half of Japan's trade and investment with Africa. I wish, however, to remind you of the existence of a peak in economic relations between Japan and Africa which occurred in the 1930s when Africa's shares, in terms of Japan's global external trade, reached a level as high as 6~8%, and cotton / cotton textiles made in Japan shared approximately 65% of the Eastern Africa market. This booming phase of our bilateral economic relations was sustained by the very active trade of cotton textiles. Though textiles are no longer relevant, it seems to me that this past history augurs well for our economic relations in the future.
With regard to the ODA, it may be emphasized that Japan has been the No. 1 ODA donor of the world over the last 10 years since 1991 despite her own persisting economic difficulties. Now our new Prime Minister J. Koizumi is challenging very bold reforms in various fields, including budget reforms, as the top item on his list. Though there is no sanctuary for this bold budget reform, including ODA, Japan will continue to attach high priority to her development assistance to Africa. If Africa could regard this Japanese development assistance effort as a credit for Japan, the Japanese people would be very honoured.
The Second point is that Japan is a leading country of Asia. In Asia, there are many important countries, including China, India as well ASEAN countries. We can, however, safely claim that Japan is an important leading country in Asia. When we have a look at her economic size, it may be more impressive, in that Japan's GDP of $4.1 trillion is 50% more than that of all the rest of the Asia combined which is $2.6 trillion.
Africa has the greatest potential for economic development in the future. And Asia, in particular East Asia, has been the world economic growth centre over decades, with an annual economic growth of 7% more in every decade since the 1970s. It is the only region in the world that has attained such high growth. Then both of our countries may have a very reasonable question; "Why don't we link this East Asia economic dynamism with Africa's great economic potentials? This is the major reason why Japan has set the South-South cooperation as a central agenda of the TICAD initiative. And with this basic thought in our mind, we have been striving to establish the Asia African Business Forum as the forum where the private sectors of both Asia and Africa can meet and do business. Japan has been playing a central role together with the collaboration of the UNDP from the planning phase to the actual implementation, as well as providing the lion's share of financial support.
Just couple of weeks ago, I went to Durban to attend the second meeting of this Forum which followed its first Forum which has successfully held in Malaysia in 1999. At the Durban Meeting of the Forum, about 200 private companies or 100 companies from both continents respectively attended. And during the meeting, which was held over one week, they reached, through one-on-one negotiations, more than 100 business contracts amounting to $80 million. This is the only example of Japan playing the leading role to bridge Asia and Africa.
The third point of Japan's importance, is that a positive effect can result from Japans involvement in Africa, by giving African problems a global nature. As far as Europe shows interests in African problems, these problems are easily seen to be local problems in the traditional Africa-Europe context. A stereotype exists that Europe has as special interests in Africa in the same way as Japan has in Asia and the US has in the American continent.
As I stated earlier, Japan as a non-traditional player in Africa, organized of the TICAD I in 1993, had a very meaningful demonstrable effect in that the international society had to renew its recognition that the development problem of Africa is a genuinely global issue which the entire international community should address together. While Japan manifested her firm commitment in Africa mainly from the perspective of the deployment of her global diplomacy, Japan's involvement in Africa results in elevating world recognition that African problems are of global concern. These two are really two sides of the same coin. In this vein, I believe that the decision by the Japanese Prime Minister to have chosen Africa as the first destination to visit at the outset of the new century had a positive impact not only in the bilateral context, but also in the global context. Likewise the organization of a number of international seminars in Japan by the Japanese Government or research institutes, generates the fostering of the international common recognition that conflict in Africa is of global concern, requiring internationally concerted actions.
Finally, I wish to very briefly speak about Japan-South Africa relations. While Japan manifests her strong commitment in Africa as a whole, Japan considers South Africa as the main partner in pursuing her African Policy. The reason is the mere fact that South Africa, together with Nigeria, is the superpower of the region. SA's wealth sharing of 40% of Sub Saharan Africa, as well as its political and moral leadership, based upon the great victory of the fight for freedom, are self-explanatory in this respect.
Apart from this, I wish to emphasize the analogy between our two nations, which share so many common features. In the first place, both of us are the only developed economies in our regions. As for Japan, it may be more precise, in the presence of Singapore or the Republic of Korea now, to state that, until recently, Japan has been the only developed economy in Asia over many decades. This obliged both of us to take the initiative for the regional development, because we know that a single prosperity can not last long. Thus Japan's relations with ASEAN can be compared with those between SA and the SADC, though Japan is outside of ASEAN and SA is part of the SADC.
Secondly both of us have been challenged by the need to harmonize Westernization with the preservation of the traditional culture. In the case of SA, this process appears in your efforts in harmonizing White Western value systems with Black traditional value systems, thus creating your own social development model. In our case, this has been in every individual's mind. And we are proud of creating the Japanese social development model which harmonizes the Western system with Japanese traditions.
Thirdly, as a consequence of the above, both of us have an identity problem. If we succeed in creating our own respective identities, while putting one foot in one world and the other foot in another, we will be in a very important position to bridge the two different worlds; Africa and the Western world in your case, Asia and the Western world in our case, or more broadly for both of us between the North and the South.
This analogy is a very unique common feature inherent to both of us. And this is the very reason that Japan seeks partnership with South Africa, not only in the African regional context but also in the global perspective.
Our two nations have so many tasks to jointly carry out, bridging the North and the South. In this way, Japan is ready to provide the forthcoming TICAD ministerial meeting, to be held this December, for the international community to deliberate about the New African Initiative, which was initiated and developed by South Africa with other African states.
In conclusion, I am very delighted to be here as Ambassador at this very crucial moment to consolidate the partnership relations between our two nations. And I wish to do my best for this ambitious goal.
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Last update: 05-Nov-2001