Japan gearing up for major international conference on African development (TICAD)

What you need to know:

In the early 1990s, developed countries’ interest in providing assistance to Africa began to wane. Under such circumstances, it was Japan that argued for the importance of Africa, and TICAD was the proof of Japan taking action. The first TICAD was organized in 1993 by Japan with the cooperation of the United Nations and Global Coalition for Africa, and attracted participants from 48 African countries, including five heads of state. The Tokyo Declaration on African Development, adopted at TICAD I, put aid and development in Africa back on the international agenda.

The Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) is an international conference led by the Japanese government and co-sponsored by the United Nations, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the African Union Commission (AUC) and the World Bank.

In the early 1990s, developed countries’ interest in providing assistance to Africa began to wane. Under such circumstances, it was Japan that argued for the importance of Africa, and TICAD was the proof of Japan taking action. The first TICAD was organized in 1993 by Japan with the cooperation of the United Nations and Global Coalition for Africa, and attracted participants from 48 African countries, including five heads of state. The Tokyo Declaration on African Development, adopted at TICAD I, put aid and development in Africa back on the international agenda.

Since then, over the course of more than 20 years, TICAD has a track record of improving social and economic conditions in Africa by mobilizing public and private resources, including but not limited to Japanese Technical assistance, grant aids and concessional loans. From 2016 onwards, the TICAD is held every three years, hosted alternatively in Africa and Japan. TICAD VI was held in 2016 in Kenya, and the  coming TICAD 7 will be held in Yokohama from August 28th through 30, 2019.

The theme of TICAD 7 is Advancing Africa's Development through People, Technology and Innovation”. This theme matches with Japan's strengths such as human resource development as well as science, technology and innovation. Under this theme, Japan intends to strongly boost Africa's development through assistance that is unique to Japan. Through this theme, Japan hopes that there will be a growing interest in Africa and TICAD 7 in both domestic and international spheres.

TICAD and JICA

TICAD was held in Africa (Nairobi, Kenya) for the first time in August 2016. The Nairobi Declaration adopted in that memorable TICAD VI emphasized that structural economic transformation through economic diversification and industrialization, resilient health systems for quality of life and social stability for shared prosperity were the key issues to tackle new challenges that Africa had been facing. For those challenges, the Government of Japan committed in TICAD VI to invest for the future of Africa by supporting quality infrastructure, building a resilient health system, and consolidating peace and stability from 2016.

Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) which is an implementing agency of Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA),   has been taking various actions and demonstrating steady results for the future of Africa, with a view to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). JICA has been taking such actions through three modalities namely:  technical cooperation, provision of ODA concessionary loans and provision of grant-aid to African countries in line with its vision of “Leading the world with trust”.

In line with the objectives of TICAD, JICA initiatives in Africa are built around three pillars as follows: Quality Africa, Resilient Africa and Stable Africa.

  1. Quality Africa

In response to the decline of global commodity prices after 2013, JICA facilitates economic structural transformation through economic diversification and industrialization in Africa. In particular, JICA advances the development of quality infrastructure by investing approximately USD 10 billion in Corridor development, natural resource and energy development, and urban development. JICA also promotes private sector activities through developing human resources with practical skills for African industries that also meet the needs of Japanese companies.

This includes training programs for mathematics and science teachers, support for vocational training and higher education, and KAIZEN initiatives in manufacturing industry and business sectors. In addition, JICA offers opportunities for young Africans to study at Masters’ degree courses in Japan and experience internship in Japanese enterprises through its ABE Initiative (African Business Education). JICA also follows up on these youth after they return to their countries, with the objective of fostering human resources who can drive Japanese Companies to expand their businesses to the African continent.

  1. Resilient Africa

JICA focuses on building resilient health system for quality of life. While focusing on the ownership and leadership of each country, JICA promotes Universal Health Care (UHC) through financial and technical cooperation by training health service workers and strengthening service delivery service systems including health financing. JICA also promotes maternal and child health, reproductive health, and measures for infectious and non-infectious diseases to achieve UHC.

  1. Stable Africa

JICA assists in building a solid foundation for social stabilization to address the global expansion of violent extremism, armed conflicts, and climate change. JICA’s contributions include developing human resources such as transferring techniques to farmers and extension workers to increase rice production, vocational training, responding to climate change and natural disasters, and managing forest resources.

For increasing rice production, JICA aims at doubling rice production in 10 years through supporting the National Rice Development of each country under the auspices of the Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD) which was founded in 2008. Also JICA supports the entire value chain such as extension, production, post - harvest handling and marketing through technical and financial cooperation and research activities in collaboration with other development partners.

JICA in Tanzania

To achieve the objectives of TICAD, JICA Tanzania is implementing activities in various sectors in the country namely Agriculture, Private Sector & Industry Development, Power & Energy, Transport, Water, Local Government, Public Financial Management, Health. In addition, JICA has been dispatching more than 1,900 volunteers to the Country since 1967. Furthermore, JICA has training program which over 3,500 Tanzanian have visited Japan and around 100 annually participate in the program.  In this article, we mention only a few activities which produce outputs for the country’s development: Urban transport development, Capacity development for trade facilitation in the East African Region, Productivity improvement in the manufacturing industry “KAIZEN”, Master Program on the African Business Education “ABE Initiative”, and Agriculture.

Urban transport development

Urban transport development is key in the development of any country. Tanzania faces the Indian Ocean and has five neighboring in-land countries. In this sense, it has geographical advantage as a regional transport hub. Considering steady economic growth observed in recent years and rapid increase of freight, the key challenge is to promote road, railway and port networks for the regional corridor utilizing the country’s advantage fully. JICA’s support in this sector commenced in 1980 with the construction of the Selander Bridge, followed by the rehabilitation of many roads in Dar es salaam’s  Kariakoo area and in the Central Business District in the 1990s.

In recent times, roads such as Kilwa, Ali Hassan and Kawawa roads in Dar es salaam were constructed with JICA’s support. More recently, JICA supported the construction of the first Flyover in Tanzania (Mfugale Flyover) at Tazara intersection which was completed in September 2018. Following the completion of the Flyover, congestion at that Intersection (which is one of the busiest in the country) has been reduced greatly.

Travel time across the section has been reduced dramatically, much to the relief of travelers bound to and from the Julius Nyerere International Airport.  Moreover, the construction site was well managed by the Japanese contractor and consultant.

The project not only achieved more than 2.5 million man hours or accident - free safety record but was also completed as scheduled. The Flyover is a lasting symbol of the cooperative memory and long –term friendship between Tanzania and Japan. Urban development projects currently under implementation include the Project for Widening of New Bagamoyo Road (Mwenge-Morocco stretch) and the construction of the Gerezani bridge project in Dar es Salaam.

Capacity development for trade facilitation in the East African Region

JICA Tanzania in collaboration with 5 revenue authorities  of the  East African countries namely Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda  have been implementing a technical cooperation project known as the “Project on Capacity Development for Trade Facilitation in East Africa” since 2017.  The objective of this project is to ensure effective “One-Stop- Border Posts” (OSBPs) operations at the target borders as well as to improve customs capacity building in risk management and border control in East Africa. In order to enhance trade facilitation within the East African Region and beyond, JICA supported the establishment of OSBPs at Rusumo on the Tanzania/Rwanda border and at Namanga on the Tanzania/Kenya border. Through these OSBPs clearance time at these posts has been reduced considerably. For instance at Rusumo, clearance time has been reduced by about 73%. 

Productivity improvement in the manufacturing sector (KAIZEN project)

Improvement of productivity in the manufacturing industry is one of JICA Tanzania’s paramount activities. In this regard based on the request of the Government JICA commenced the Project on Strengthening Manufacturing Enterprises through Quality and Productivity Improvement (KAIZEN Project) in 2003.  This project initially covered Dar es Salaam, Dodoma and Morogoro Regions and aims at increasing, with limited budget, productivity in the manufacturing sector.

Through this project, more than 50 companies and over 2,000 individuals were exposed to the KAIZEN approach. As a result, productivity at such companies has significantly improved with some doubling production and others reducing the defective rate by about 70%. Phase 2 of the project will cover more Regions and more companies. The ultimate goal is to introduce KAIZEN to 100 companies and to develop 150 KAIZEN trainers throughout the country.

Meanwhile Tanzania’s Arusha - based A to Z Textile Mills limited emerged the winner of the African continental KAIZEN award competition. The Arusha based company, which applies KAIZEN approach in its activities, was bestowed the award in a competition which took place in Tunis, Tunisia in June 2019.  The other countries which took part in the competition were Tunisia, Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, Zambia, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Namibia.

Master Program on African Business Education Initiative (ABE Initiative)

The African Business Education Initiative (ABE Initiative) is an Initiative which commenced in 2014 with the aim of bridging the gap between Japan and Tanzania through capacity building of African youth.   As of now about 85 Tanzanian youth have benefitted from the Masters’ degree programs implemented at Japanese Universities and internships at Japanese enterprises in Japan through this Initiative. The ABE returnees are expected to contribute to the development of industries in the country and build networks with the Japanese private sector.

Agriculture

In agriculture, JICA Tanzania’s support to the sector started in 1974 with the “Kilimanjaro Agricultural Development Project”. This was followed by the development of the Lower Moshi Irrigation Scheme and Kilimanjaro Agricultural Development Centre and currently the Kilimanjaro Agricultural Training Centre (KATC).  Since that time, JICA has been supporting rice farming through the Rice Industry Development Project (TANRICE 2) which now covers the whole of Tanzania. 

Through this project more than 15,000 famers have been trained and adopted improved rice cultivation technologies. Moreover farmers who participated in such training have had their rice yields increased by about 40%.  In the 2000s, JICA expanded its activities in the agriculture sector by strengthening the Government’s monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system. This led to the development of web-based information system called “Agriculture Routine Data System (ARDS)”.  In 2017 over 90% of agriculture information across the country was captured by the system every month. Early this year the Project for Strengthening DADP Planning and Implementation Capacity through Use of SHEP Approach (TANSHEP) was commenced.

It aims at promoting the horticulture sub-sector targeting 12 primary Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in Arusha, Kilimanjaro and Tanga Regions and in other government horticulture priority areas. The purpose of this project is to enable Districts in targeted areas increase income of farmers in those areas through the “Grow to sell” and not the “Grow and sell approach.

JICA Tanzania Office

JICA’s activities for Tanzania commenced in 1962, just one year after Tanganyika’s independence, when a single Tanzanian was accepted for technical training in Japan. Since then such activities continued to grow and expand over the years and now include not only technical cooperation but also the provision of ODA concessionary loans and grant-aid.

To undertake such activities JICA Tanzania Office has a committed staff of over 50 men and women who work around the clock to ensure that its operations in the country are carried out smoothly for the benefit of the people of our two friendly countries of Tanzania and Japan.