By VICTORIA OJEME

In this interview, the Japanese Ambassador to Nigeria, Ryuichi Shoji, speaks on the just concluded Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD), but, more importantly, the need and urgency of the African development and mobilizing international partnership, serving as a forum to strategise African development policies.

We will like to know what TICAD is all about?

TICAD stands for Tokyo International Conference for African Development. Actually, the first meeting of TICAD was held in 1993 and that meeting gave us some background on how the Japanese initiative started. If you look at the situation in Africa today, there are a dozen of African countries  in conflict and democracy is not a principle of their political system; many African countries are going through economic and financial difficulties and it got to a point that the international donor communities became fatigued about assisting Africa.

Japan saw at that time that that we needed  to reverse this trend and raise the global recognition of the need and urgency of the African development issues and the imperatives of mobilising international partnership and introducing our new development paradigm so we can make progress on African development. Basically, TICAD was hosted by the Japanese government together with some southerners in 1993 and this year TICAD is going to celebrate its 20th year.

Modest contribution

TICAD has made modest contribution to the transformation of African countries by raising the interest of the international community’s towards the needs and urgency of the African development and mobilising international partnership, serving as a forum to strategise African development policies.

I would also love to add two or three things as the characteristics of TICAD. First, the ownership concept that TICAD has held. The ownership of African countries and their own development is one of the chief guiding principles of TICAD with international parties and this means that African countries themselves decide the orientation of their own development and pursued  through their own efforts.

Second, TICAD has been serving as a forum for African countries to discuss and come up with their position on some of the international issues which are of great importance to them and communicate this African position to other important forums like G8 and so on.

Process of expression

The third point is that TICAD has clocked 20years; it is a process of an expression of the Japanese government which they believe and trust in the huge potentials of African countries. From the inception  of TICAD, we appealed to the world that Africa has huge potentials and to the international community the necessity to mobilise the partnership to make the potentials a reality.

I will also want to stress about the evolution of TICAD itself. TICAD is, without doubt, a national/global platform for dialogue of Africa on African development issues. TICAD is action oriented. TICAD Two was where the action plan was adopted and emphasised the ordering of priorities with numerical targets to guide every participating country  to follow up on the commitment made during the  conference.

In what area can Nigeria benefit from this conference?

To answer your question, let me mention first what happened during the just concluded TICAD Five meeting. There was what we call double audience, which was given to African countries and this objective was for aids to come to Africa.

In the case of Nigeria, our embassy helps to implement the strategies on decisions taken at TICAD meetings. TICAD commitment is delivered, communicated and passed on by each embassy in African countries.

Vision 20:2020

The second point is that TICAD supports Vision 20:2020, Vision 20:2020  is a comprehensive development policy for Nigeria and we wish this Vision is  fully realised. TICAD Five supports the major mandates of the Vision 20:2020.

There are three major things that TICAD Five discussed; first is robust and sustainable economy and provides a very favourable condition for trade and investment. Some of our positive elements include sound and macro-ethnic policy, improved governance, expanding consumers market and young vibrate labour forces and emerging local private sectors. One of our focus scenes of TICAD Five is to give more  roles to the private sector.

We are hoping that Nigeria would mobilise more Japanese companies to come to Nigeria to invest and do business.

Three-point gains

In this regard, there are roles assigned to the private sector which I would mention about two or three points that were discussed at TICAD Five.

One is infrastructure improvement; certainly, industrial infrastructure is a focus to attract more foreign investment. In Nigeria and Africa generally, there is a huge gap between  financial availability and the infrastructure needs; the private sector must play a  role in narrowing this gap, but we are willing to assist to improve  these infrastructures.

Two is the role of government in attracting private investment; it is the responsibility of  government to create a business friendly and enabling environment for the private sector  activities. It is also one of the very important issues that was discussed in TICAD Five and certainly human development which  is required to deliver the policy.

We need a good human improvement on development so that the policy will be implemented and guided properly. Three,  TICAD Five highlights the importance of agriculture which is certainly an important sector for job creation and rural development. Agriculture can also be a motor for growth and development. TICAD Five also looks at production value chain.

Japan just marked the second anniversary of the tsunami. What interest does Japan have on Nigeria that it has done so much  offering grant to the country?

Before I proceed to answering that question, let me add some few words on TICAD  because we have a very sustainable economy, one I have never seen. There are adaptive two scenes: inclusiveness and zeal. Inclusiveness of growth is a very important issue because, looking at Nigeria, it has achieved such a tremendous economic growth since the year 2000, but there are still many people living in poverty. The question now is, has  African countries stressed  growth as a  means to tackle poverty?

Growth should not just be simple growth, but should be an inclusive growth which  benefit should be widely shared to a large segment of the people. This is not only important for Nigeria but also for other African countries because their situations are more or less similar.

Nigeria can present her strategy to tackle the issues  of poverty and quality growth and mobilise the international community. Another issue is peace and stability. Mali and the sub-Sahara situation are attracting much attention and Nigeria has clearly said that the situation in Mali affects directly the situation of things in Nigeria. Security and peace are a must for the achievement of development. TICAD Five sees  security, peace situations from three angles: importance of peace, stability and governance, and how they affect low development.

We need to address the underlined causes of insecurity and lack of peace by addressing social economic inclusion, bad governance, unemployment especially amongst the youth, and generally low development. The TICAD approach is a comprehensive approach to low security issues.

Second is the capacity building of African institutions. The African principle is to tackle security issues by themselves and to do so and, if this approach is valid, then African institutions, capacity will be strengthened. There is also the  financial issue which is financial support.

There are many African initiatives in this field, but, because of  lack of  adequate funds, there have been little or no results and this is certainly an area where Africa needs international partnership. So, from these three angles, we deal with peace and security which is certainly beneficial to Nigeria as a leading country in this field especially within ECOWAS and AU.