Japan on Saturday announced a major three-year, $30 billion investment plan for Africa. A program that gives the impression that Tokyo wants to play a more important economic role in Africa, but that must be placed in a complicated historical context.
China, India, the United States, Europe… but also Japan. Everyone wants to get an economic foothold in Africa, including the former Empire of the Rising Sun, which we too often tend to forget when it comes to discussing foreign interests on the African continent.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida undertook to recall this on Saturday August 27, on the occasion of the eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development held in Tunisia, promising that his country was going to invest the record sum of 30 billion dollars in three years in Africa.
Japan, precursor of the great summits for Africa
This is more than the 20 billion dollars that Tokyo had pledged to put on the table to help the development of African countries in 2019. And not far from the 40 billion dollars in loans promised by China, the big Japan’s regional competitor, to African countries last year.
These investment promises tick the main boxes of the emergencies facing Africa. Fumio Kishida has announced more than a billion to help the continent deal with epidemics like Covid-19, and to support projects to fight once morest global warming. Finally, Tokyo also wants to help Africa overcome the food shortages caused by the war in Ukraine.
The rest of the $30 billion is to be used to attract Japanese companies to invest in Africa. A score that is ultimately familiar to anyone familiar with the history of Japanese-African economic relations. This mixture of humanitarian aid and investment promises is a cocktail that “Tokyo has already presented several times to African countries in the past”, underlines Kweku Ampiah, specialist in economic relations between Japan and African countries at the University of Leeds.
This is even the main credo of the last Tokyo International Conferences on African Development – also called Ticad (Tokyo International Conference on African Development). They are the ancestors of the economic summits for Africa organized by most of the great powers.
Japan is, in fact, a pioneer in the field. The first Ticad took place in Tokyo in 1993, shortly before France did the same in 1996, then it was the turn of China (2006), India (2008), the United States (2014) and, finally, Russia (2019).
Historical misunderstanding
A pole position in the race for the African market from which Japan has not benefited at all. “Apart from the time of Ticad, Japan is invisible in Africa and Africa is invisible in Japan”, summarizes Seifudein Adem, specialist in international relations of Japan at Dōshisha University in Kyoto, interviewed by the South China Morning Post.
Worse, Japan even lost ground. “He was the 4e trading partner of sub-Saharan African countries in 2004, and is now only 6e“, emphasizes the Financial Times. “At the continental level, it is no longer even part of the top 10 of the most important investors. Japan has even been overtaken by Singapore and Switzerland”, underlines Kweku Ampiah.
A sad record that comes from a historical misunderstanding. “TICADs originally depended on the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs alone. In fact, despite its name of conference on development, it was a much more diplomatic than economic initiative”, explains the specialist of the university. of Leeds.
In the 1990s, Japan “was seeking to increase its international prestige and was aiming for a seat as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council”, recalls Bolade M. Eyinla, professor of international relations at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria, in a study of Japanese diplomacy in Africa published in 2019. To do this, it needed the support of African countries… which Tokyo hoped to obtain in exchange for financial aid negotiated during these summits.
Nor was the economic interest of investing in Africa obvious to the Japanese at the turn of the 21st century.e century. At the time, “the development of commercial relations with other Asian countries was enough for Japan”, notes Kweku Ampiah.
A competitor for China?
It was not until African countries began to experience strong growth in the late 2000s and early 2010s, driven by Chinese and Indian investment, that Japan realized it was missing a train to which he had nevertheless hooked the first car.
It was from this point that the Japanese government began to insist more and more on investments by Japanese companies in Africa. “Since Shinzo Abe became Prime Minister [en 2012, NDLR]Japan has become very good at talking regarding public-private cooperation to encourage companies to invest in Africa,” notes Kweku Ampiah.
A voluntarist speech which made some say that Japan was trying to overshadow China in Africa, underlines Daisuke Akimoto, political scientist at Meiji University in Tokyo, in a column published by the site The Diplomat. After all, Japan adopted the triennial rhythm for its summit “at the request of African countries who said that this was how China was doing”, noted Kweku Ampiah in a column published by the South African newspaper Daily Maverick. Tokyo has also agreed to hold its summit in African countries…just like China did. Until 2016, these conferences to promote development in Africa systematically took place in the Japanese capital.
However, the idea that Africa is the new terrain of a battle for influence between Japan and China does not seem very credible to Kweku Ampiah. “No Japanese politician believes in it. Japan absolutely does not have the means to compete with China,” he summarizes.
There are just over 500 Japanese companies present in Africa and 70% of investments are concentrated in South Africa. Nothing to do with the approximately 2,500 Chinese companies established all over the African continent.
In fact, there once more seems to be a gap between the Japanese announcements and reality. “Some of the African interlocutors think that the Japanese talk a lot but do little,” notes Kweku Ampiah. In other words, promises of billions of dollars of investment do not always materialize.
This is why this specialist is cautious regarding the announcements of the eighth Ticad. “Let’s wait to see how these promises translate into action,” he concludes. Maybe this is a real turning point in the Japanese approach to Africa, or maybe it will be another missed opportunity. The last ? In the influential Japanese business daily Nihon Keizai Shinbun, a columnist wrote in June 2022 that some people close to the government wanted to draw a definitive line under Ticad.