Japan established its Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in 1993 – a model that was followed by others and saw a growing number of high-level summits on Africa, including in China, India, Turkey and Russia.
TICAD VII, held in August 2019 in Yokohama, sought to strengthen partnerships between Japan and Africa in three main areas: technical cooperation; business and women’s entrepreneurship; and next generation and people-to-people connectivity.
The first UK-Africa Investment Summit held in January 2020 highlighted similar themes, with an emphasis on investing to generate sustainable growth and create jobs. In an increasingly multipolar world with a greater need for international cooperation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, shared goals and interests among various African countries, Japan and the UK could bring opportunities for fruitful trilateral and multilateral cooperation.
