Spotlight turns on corporate expansions in Africa as the continent’s presidents jet into Japan for TICAD7

The Seventh Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD7) kicked off today, August 28, in Japan as more than twenty heads of state and governments from Africa jetted into Yokohama for the summit.

The conference has always been hosted in Japan since it was launched in 1993 save for TICADVI which happened in Africa, for the first time. TICAD has undoubtedly gone through critical transformations in the recent years.

In a move seen as trying to avoid direct competition with China, a country which has really penetrated into Africa, Japan has chosen to turn its main focus on improving the quality of economic assistance as opposed to quantity.

TICAD7 is expected to be more business-oriented compared to the previous engagements with indicators showing that a large percentage of the Japanese private sector is finally becoming ‘more serious’ about the larger Africa economy.

For the first time, the summit is set to have a business dialogue session that will bring together government and private sector representatives on august 29 contrary to what used to happen in the previous TICAD conferences in which such sessions were held along the sidelines of the main event.

The issue that Japanese firms are slowly but surely becoming serious with the African market and its business as well is mainly attributed to the fact that the market has started to enjoy rising prices of natural resources such as minerals, oil and many other commodities. The market has initially suffered the effects of persistent conflicts, food crisis and poverty a great deal. But the narrative is changing now.

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), African countries maintained high real economic growth for a period running from 2000 through 2017.

The United Nations has also pointed out that by the year 2100, Africa’s population will have hit 4.28 billion people while that of Asia, which is currently the main overseas market for many Japanese firms, will have started shrinking after hit its peak by 2055.

“At the end of this century, one in every four humans in the world will be African. So Africa will be highly significant as a market. It’s regarded as ‘the last frontier of the 21st century,’” said Shigeru Ushio, director-general of the African Affairs Department of Japan’s Foreign Ministry in a recent interview.

“Africa has far more potential since economic growth is expected to continue and the middle-income class will expand,” Keidanren, Japan’s most powerful business lobby, said.

You can download the PDF of this TICAD7 here.

Africa Global News Publication