Kweku Ampiah

The dynamics of Japan's relations with Africa : South Africa, Tanzania and Nigeria

An in-depth examonation of Japans relations with Africa, this text details Japans political, economic and diplomatic relations with sub-Saharan Africa from 1974 to the early 1990s. It analyses how Japans dependence on raw materials from South Africa made it impossible for Tokyo in the 1970s and 1980s to support other African states in their fight against the minority government and its policy of apartheid. Case studies of Tanzania and Nigeria dissect Japans trade, aid and investment policies in sub-Saharan Africa more widely.

The Discourse of Local Ownership in Development: Rhapsodies about ‘Self-help’ in Japan's Economic Assistance to Africa

This article explores Japans initiatives toward the development discourse on Africa through the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), and specifically in regards to a concept that is increasingly becoming a core tenet of the TICAD, the ‘national ownership’ of development. The article examines the literature on development ownership before concentrating more specifically on the Japanese responses to the discourse. The analysis explores Japans emphasis on the principle of self-help in national development and suggests that the conflation of self-help and ownership in the Japanese discourse of development needs to be disentangled for clarity as the two concepts are not the same. Generally the article endeavours to bring into perspective Japans attempts to stitch itself more forcefully into the fabric of the discourse on African development with the objective of contributing a more nuanced approach to the global initiative to finding a solution to Africas development problematic. It is suggested that in doing so Japan is transposing its understanding of development, along with its belief in the state-centric approach to economic growth onto Africa. How the African policymakers have responded to the concept of ‘ownership’ in the context of TICAD is also assessed.

Japan and Commonwealth Africa

Abstract This article examines Japans relations with the African countries from a post-World War II perspective and identifies an Anglo-Japanese initiative in the early 1960s to collaborate about matters relating to Africas socio-economic development. The analysis pertains essentially to the Commonwealth African countries and further shows that apart from attempts to expand its exports to these countries, Japans initiatives towards Africa until the 1990 left no landmarks that call for celebration, not least because Tokyos foreign policy towards Africa was saddled with immobilist tendencies. The advent of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development since 1993 has, however, brought some dynamism to how Japan attends to issues relating to Africas economic development. The article outlines recent events that demonstrate the dramatic transformation in Japanese foreign policy towards the Commonwealth African countries.

Who’s Afraid of Confucius?

The paper examines the popularly known Confucian values and ritual practices and questions the notion that these norms and practices are unique to East Asia. By evoking the essential social values and norms of the Akan culture (in West Africa) the analysis posits that the so-called East Asian values as codified by Confucius are actually universal principles. The essay examines how the principles of filial piety and ancestor worship play out in the social practices of the Asante people (of the Akan ethnic group) and the Confucian communities, and suggests that a proper comparative examination of these practices across cultures would show that some cultural groups outside the East Asian zone might turn out to be more ‘Confucian’ than some of the East Asian countries.

The Evolving Relations between Japan and Africa: The Discourse of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD)

At a time when China’s growing interest in Africa is convulsing the discourse on the region’s international relations and economic development, Japan’s long-standing engagements with the African countries must not be overlooked. This Special Issue therefore highlights Japan’s leadership role in the attempts to devise, through the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), some sustainable correctives for Africa’s development challenges. The idea behind the Special Issue is to bring Japan firmly back into the debate about the unfolding synergies between Africa and the Asian drivers and to demonstrate in what ways Japan might be assisting to reappraise the dysfunctions in the developmental initiatives of the African countries, and where it might be failing. The project is also necessitated by the pressing need to take stock of the diverse currents of the TICAD process since its inception in 1993, and in light of the impending TICAD V Summit from 1 to 3 June 2013, which would mark the twentieth anniversary of the launch of the process. The six articles in the issue aim to bring readers up to speed in terms of Japan’s strategies for Africa’s socio-economic development, and thereby serve as a ‘road map’ between TICAD IV (in 2008) and TICAD V. They also alert readers to the evolving but complementary facets of the TICAD process. Observers of Japan’s relations with Africa will be aware that following the Second World War, economic interests essentially dictated Japan’s relations with the subSaharan African countries. Japanese foreign policy towards Africa from the 1960s to the early 1980s was based on neo-mercantilist policies central to which was the concept of ‘separating economics from politics’, seikei bunri, not unlike the well-rehearsed Chinese policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. The ‘dual policy’ towards the region that emerged from this revolved around Japan’s resource interests in South Africa on the one hand, and the political necessity to build diplomatic relations with the postcolonial African states on the other. Because Japan’s economic interests in these postcolonial countries remained rather limited, its official development assistance (ODA) to the region was hardly designed to engender sustainable economic growth; aid to Africa was therefore disbursed without any overarching modalities for sustainable development. In essence ODA to the African states in the 1960s was designed to alleviate problems of trade friction, and in the 1970s to secure natural resources. Subsequently, Japan’s aid to sub-Saharan Africa

Editorial: Japan and the Commonwealth of Nations: Present and Future Prospects

The reinvention and reformulation of the modern Commonwealth following the end of World War II was an inevitable response to the transformations in international society that were brought about by the war and its outcomes. The swift emergence of the newly independent states of Asia after the war, followed by the explosion of liberation movements in Africa and the subsequent decolonisation of the sub-Saharan African countries, hastened the end of the British Empire. That necessitated the reformulation of the original formula (as conceived in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster) of the British Commonwealth, which was then composed of the United Kingdom as the mother country and the club of pre-1945 Dominions—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and the Irish Free State. Incidentally, 1931 is again relevant to this analysis from a different perspective, not least because in that year, and just a few months before the formation of the British Commonwealth, Japan invaded Manchuria for which it incurred a resounding, if ineffective, condemnation by the Lytton Report of 1932. That, among other events leading to the PacificWar, destroyed what had hitherto been a constructive diplomatic relationship between Japan and Britain and its dominions, a relationship which had been undergirded by the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902–23 and its legacy. The emergence of the post-colonial Commonwealth of Nations, with its plurality of contending international interests and positions, was an affirmation of the ‘wind of change’ engineered by the dynamics and chaos of the post-war period. Somewhat freed from the fog of its history, the Commonwealth was redefined, as stipulated in the Singapore Declaration of 1971, ‘as a voluntary association of independent sovereign states, each responsible for its own policies, consulting and cooperating in the common interests of their peoples and in the promotion of international understanding and world peace’. Before that the Commonwealth Secretariat had been established in 1965 to replace the Commonwealth Relations Office, but most importantly to make the association independent from Whitehall and the British government. As dictated and directed by the unrelenting boldness of the era, the member states of the association grew almost in direct proportion to the decline of the British Empire and London’s dominance of the association. In essence, the Empire morphed into the Commonwealth. Indeed, the newly independent states of Asia and Africa that became part of the Commonwealth radically altered its essence and dimensions, by challenging its imperial foundations and injecting a crisis of trust into the relations between the old and the new members. Effectively, ‘the Commonwealth was The Round Table Vol. 99, No. 409, 363–370, August 2010