Japan hosting Africa - TICAD IV

So here we are at another conference on Africa, full of Africans, held outside Africa at an Asian economic powerhouse. This all sounds very familiar. In 2007 the African Development Bank Group held its Annual Meetings in Shanghai, China, from May 16-17. It is easy to become cynical. What is the world coming to, after all, when Africans are unable to host their own meetings? How can the African Development Bank take its annual meeting to Shanghai, is there no African city that can host our top bankers and economists? Why do 40+ African Heads of State have to fly half way across the world to Japan to sit down and discuss issues of crucial importance to the continent? It is easy to become cynical of the whole TICAD process and dismiss it as yet another example of the never-ending talking shop of conferences on Africa.

That would be unfortunate position to take and would be missing the point. The multitude of problems facing Africa require a dedicated African response. That is established. “African solutions to African problems” is the rallying cry heard from cabinet rooms to street corners across the African continent. These African solutions, however, cannot exist in isolation from the rest of the world. Rather active, positive and accountable engagement with partners is required. These partners may be development organisations such as the numerous UN bodies, these partners could be individual countries, such as Japan and China. China is one of the 24 Non-Regional Members of the African Development Bank and only the second to host the Annual Meetings after Spain in 2001. Japan launched TICAD in 1993 to promote high-level policy dialogue between African leaders and development partners.

At TICAD the focus is on two general objectives: Ownership and Partnership.

1. to promote high-level policy dialogue between African leaders and their partners
2. to mobilize support for African-owned development initiatives

Rather than viewing these occasional meetings hosted for Africans outside African as an insult to our independence we should consider them an alternative type of forum, which may just produce some concrete results. After all our African Heads of State gather regularly across the continent at African Union meetings and the results of those meetings usually leave a lot to be desired. Take the African Union meeting earlier this year in Addis Ababa held while Kenya was at the height of violence, a situation the Heads of State refused to address as they collectively buried their heads in the sand. Meetings being held in African is no guarantee for success.

Another advantage of holding a high level meeting such as TICAD outside Africa is that it removes the pressure of acting as host from all nations leaving the Heads of State and ministers to concentrate fully on engaging with each other positively. It is an added advantage that TICAD is hosted by the very efficient yet extremely polite Japanese people (and I am not just saying that because I am a sitting on a 16MB broadband connection – although it helps). Heads of State are ferried from one venue to the other rapidly and safely with none of the megalomania that usually accompanies our African presidential security details.

Japan has proved herself to be a host worth listening to because she listens and acts on what she hears. The TICAD process is very much one of dialogue. This is reflected in the growing support for the process. At TICAD III in 2003 23 Heads of State came to Tokyo, this time round the number has double to over 40 Heads of State/Heads of Governments attending. Every single African country, bar one, has a strong delegation here. The only country without a delegation is Somalia. One clear indicator of political success in Africa would be a strong Somali delegation at TICAD V in five years time.

[Photo Credit: Heads of State/Government at TICAD IV. Copyright: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan]

TICAD IV | TICAD

|  Email This Post | 1 comment Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 6:09 AM

TICAD IV - Yokohama, Japan

This week I am in Yokohama covering the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) IV for AllAfrica as part of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) press team. I am not here as a delegate but as part of the press corps, which I feel is significant.

This is another example that increasingly the line between the traditional mainstream media and citizen media is blurring rapidly. The rest of the UNDP press team here at TICAD is made up of traditional journalists from print, TV and radio, now they have a blogger not only on the scene but embedded with them as another outlet off TICAD coverage. We saw during the 2007 Kenyan election, how bloggers in particular and the citizen media in general stepped up to cover angles of the election that the mainstream media were not covering and/or were ignoring. We also saw bloggers step up and fill the gaps when the mainstream media was gagged in a draconian ministerial ban on live broadcasting. Bloggers as part of a traditional press team is a welcome move, long may it continue.

I have watched this change in the role of bloggers with interest. At TEDGlobal in Arusha last year the Google PR team was enthusiastic and insistent that bloggers joined the traditional journalists at any Google announcement. At Highway Africa, Africa’s biggest conference for journalists, bloggers have graduated from being a sideshow at the Digital Citizens’ Indaba (albeit a very significant and extremely worthwhile sideshow) to being included in the main conference programme. Indeed the Digital Citizens’ Indaba is now a draw for traditional journalists, at least those with the foresight to see where the future lies. In January Internews Kenya organized a media forum entitled Media Coverage of Post Election Violence Before and Now. It was an opportunity for the media in Kenya to reflect and to critique each other and themselves on coverage during the 2007 elections and the violence that followed. It was refreshing that I was invited as a blogger to take part in that conversation as an equal member.

Coming back to TICAD IV, it will be a challenge to find the correct tone and angle as a citizen journalist as I feel there will be no point in reporting what happened and who said what to whom as the traditional mainstream media seems to have the covered. If there is anything you feel I should look at please let me know in the comments or via email.

If you are interested in following TICAD or want to know what it is all about have a look at the website. If you want to see and hear what is going on in the main hall check out the Live Broadcasts. There are more than 40 African Heads of State/ Heads of Government here; surely you will find some them fascinating!

TICAD IV | TICAD

|  Email This Post | 1 comment Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 7:48 AM