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How Japan seeks to compete with China in Africa
Japan is hosting its triennial summit with Africa from Wednesday, August 28th in Yokohama Port. This grand mass of cooperation, the 7th of its kind, is openly aimed at further strengthening the economic links between the archipelago and the continent where the big Chinese neighbor is omnipresent.
Dozens of African heads of state were invited. But impossible yesterday to have the exact list of presents. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to give names before the opening, fearing that some will cancel under pressure from Beijing. This is to say the intense competition that is engaged today countries that want to compete with China to seduce Africa . China being the omnipresent major power on the continent, whether in terms of development aid, investment, loan and trade.
Can Japan afford to catch up with its big neighbor?
Japan had a good intuition in creating this forum in 1993, when the others turned away from Africa to take an interest in the countries of the former Soviet bloc. But this time advantage was short because Beijing quickly organized its own event and deployed a very offensive African strategy. Since this first Ticad, Tokyo International Conference on African Development, the Japanese archipelago has distributed $ 47 billion on the continent while China now devotes 60 billion per year . In financial terms impossible to fight on equal terms with Beijing. Ditto in terms of direct investment: Japan invested five times less in 2017 than China.
Tokyo has other assets. And seeks to increase awareness of its added value: first of all recognized skills in terms of quality infrastructure, "quality" a recurring term in the speech of Japanese officials anxious to differentiate themselves from the Chinese. Their mastery of high technology is another undeniable asset of the Japanese.
Are African countries sensitive to these differences?
Japan has long been a non-intrusive donor, a valued quality in Africa. Moreover, the fact that he wants to become more involved coincides with the rise of a certain mistrust with regard to Chinese projects. Tanzania, for example, has finally refused the $ 10 billion Chinese investment proposed to renovate the Port of Bayamago. There is therefore a favorable conjunction. Now, the careful Japanese project review procedures are very long and this can put off the interested countries. And if the Japanese government is more and more pro-African , Japanese companies are struggling to keep up. They are invited to this conference, as they were to the previous one held in Kenya.
What will be the concrete benefits of this summit?
A loan of 400 billion yen, or 3.4 billion euros should be confirmed for the construction of wind turbines in Egypt and geothermal power plants in Kenya and Djibouti. The Nikkei business newspaper mentions a second 300 billion yen envelope for other infrastructure projects, of " quality " of course. These gifts have of course a counterpart: for years Tokyo seeks the support of African countries to obtain a seat on the UN Security Council.
In short...
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