Delegates from African nations, Japan and their partners wrapped up a two-day meeting on African development Monday in Tanzania hearing Japanese representatives describing Chinas huge presence on the continent.
Resource-poor Japan, Asias largest economy, and its rising rival China are in harsh competition for influence and resources, including minerals and energy, from Africa, where Beijing’s presence has grown sharply.
– Out of the 53 countries on the continent, we have an embassy in 31 countries. China has 46 or 48 embassies, said a Japanese representative.
The population giant is also ahead of Japan in terms of people on the ground, the Japanese diplomat said, with 800.000 to one million Chinese believed to be on the continent compared to no more than 7.000 Japanese.
At the two day meeting over 400 delegates praised Japan for surpassing the pace of its commitments in the last two years of which doubling Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Africa from 900 million US dollar to 1,8 billion per annum and doubling its Foreign Direct Investment to Africa from 1,7 billion dollar to 3,4 billion by year 2012.
Japan’s foreign affairs minister Katsuya Okada, who co-chaired the meeting along side Tanzania’s minister for finance and the economy Mustafa Mkulo, lent a sense of freshness to the commitments when he told delegates that his country was ready to renegotiate and discuss further on terms under which ODA is disbursed to African countries.
Okada urged his counterparts from seven African countries on Sunday to strengthen their cooperation with Japan on reform of the UN Security Council.
Okada, who met with the foreign ministers of Botswana, Rwanda and five other African countries on the sidelines of a meeting of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, also called on them to accelerate their cooperation on measures to combat global warming.
Japan two years ago pledged to raise aid to Africa to 1,8 billion dollar by 2012. It gave 1,75 billion dollar in 2008 and 1,65 billion last year, said Asako Okai, director of the ministry’s Second Africa Division.
The meeting ended with an appeal to the Group of Eight major nations to fulfill their promise in 2005 to increase aid to the continent.
Participants at the ministerial-level meeting, held in Arusha, Tanzania, referred in their joint statement to the G-8 nations’ pledge at their 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
