Japan's Foreign Aid Policy to Africa Since the Tokyo International Conference on African Development

Japan celebrated its fiftieth year as a major donor in official development assistance in 2004, it is appropriate to reflect on the forces and motivations behind the implementation of foreign aid.1 While the literature on Japan's foreign aid has been informative overall, most of it has focused on the relationship between Japan and other Asian recipient countries. Certainly there is good reason for this emphasis, considering that 90 percent of Japanese aid targets Asian countries. However, the reasons for Japan's official development assistance (ODA) policy to Asia are different, in many significant ways, from its reasons for providing aid to Africa. Previous research has tended to conflate information about Japan's motives towards Africa with its motives towards Asia. This article seeks to