The Fourth Ministerial Follow-up Meeting of Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Marrakech

The Fourth Ministerial Follow-up Meeting of Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV), which ended on Sunday in Marrakech, called for reinforcing the support for Africa in order to boost its economic growth. The conference was attended by 51 African nations and co-chaired by Japan and Morocco.

The conference committed to undertaking a joint action to turn Africa into a hot destination for investments through ameliorating the business climate, developing infrastructure and encouraging public-private partnerships and South-South cooperation. Co-chaired by Moroccan Foreign Minister Saad Dine El Otmani and  Japanese Foreign Minisdter Koichiro Gemba, the meeting assessed the implementation of the 2008 Yokohama action plan. TICAD V is scheduled for June 1-3, 2013, in the Japanese city of Yokohama.

Japan is  giving $1.3 billion  this  year in aid to African nations to help combat the effects of climate change, Japan’s Foreign Affairs Minister Koichiro Gemba said. “Sustainable development from now on depends on the consolidation of security and peace, and the processes of democratization and good governance,” he said.

Moroccan Foreign Minister Saad Dine El Otmani affirmed, on Saturday, that South-South cooperation is a crucial lever that backs up efforts by the international community in favor of development in Africa. He highlighted Morocco’s role in supporting development in Africa which included private sector support in the field of  air transportation, banking services, mining exploitation, vocational training and fisheries. Morocco ranks first in terms of investments in West Africa which shows its effective commitment to upgrading and developing the economic fabric of the continent’s countries. He underlined Morocco’s active participation in peacekeeping and re-construction operations in some African countries and he urged African states and their development partners to act immediately in order to lay the bases for a comprehensive vision that would enable Africa to catch up with development and achieve an inclusive and equitable economic growth. the report in MAP concluded.

Japan extended about ¥10.8 billion (1.o9 million dirhams) in low-interest yen loans to Morocco on Friday to help the country upgrade sewerage systems in regional areas, with Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba and Moroccan Economics and Finance Minister Nizar Baraka exchanging notes to that effect. The targeted communes are Bouarfa, Nador, Targuist, Essaouira, Berkane, Al Aroui, Taourirt, Ouarzazate and M’rirt.

He had talks with Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane and Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Minister Saad-Eddine el-Othmani that Japan will continue to support Morocco’s democratization, including efforts to reduce regional disparities and develop industries, according to Japanese officials. The Japanese foreign minister also met with King Mohammed VI and agreed to accelerate cooperation in the field of solar energy while confirming their aim to strengthen the two countries’ economic partnership by expanding investments from Japan.

In the side events of this ministerial meeting, African civil society – represented by the civic commission of Africa (CCf-A) was very active, and had organized several seminars and meetings to stress the voices of African grassroots community.

At the end of the meeting, Civic Commission of Africa has released a statement in which they call for:

 

1.African leaders should absolutely go forward assisting democratic process by assisting structural reforms through good governance mechanisms like the APRM(African Peer Review Mechanism) , NEPAD(Nouveau partenariat pour le développement de l’Afrique), OGI (open government initiatives) etc, based on satisfying the grass-root community’s needs basically in health, food security, job creation.

 

2.Address Africa’s food and price crisis through Africa’s 3 main priority areas of agriculture, governance and capacity building

3. Recognize that meeting those gender based MDG targets such as maternal and child health as well as education requires that women are given a greater say in development planning.

4. Ensure that the women should play a leadership role in all the pillars of MDG’s implementation not only as a subject of empowerment but as an actor.

5.In addition to consolidating a common Africa science-based position under the auspices of African Union, AMCEN (The African Ministerial Conference on the Environment) and African Group of Negotiators under UNFCCC(United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), TICAD should work with African countries to mainstream climate change into national poverty reduction and sustainable development plans/strategies.

6. Ensure that there is optimum funding for specifically MDG 1 on Poverty and Hunger and Decent Work and MDG 5 on Maternal New Born and Child Health.

7.In order to achieve the MDG in 2015, TICAD should urgently initiate “new strategies” for the remaining years.

8.Accumulated expertise under the umbrella of TICAD process deserves the launching of a structure that assists the official channels of cooperation in the conception and implementation of projects, training, sharing expertise and experiences for projects’ assessments. This structure could be designed as a muliti-disciplinary INSTITUTE with a Headquarter placed in Japan, and four regional thematic branches located in Uganda (TICAD institute for Human Security), in South Africa (TICAD institute for Climate Change), in Morocco (TICAD institute for Human development), and in Benin (TICAD institute for Food Security). Government of Japan and all other TICAD co organizers should work for such structure that will give without any doubt to TICAD more visibility, local ownership, conventional knowledge data base for disaster mitigation management and more efficiency in field in both Africa and Japan.

9. African Civil Society condemns non-constitutional political changes and calls on all concerned both in and outside Africa to stop assisting changes of governments by using such means.

10.Civic Commission for Africa Calls on Morocco to come back to its original and natural status, not only as a member African union but to assume its former leadership role. This stems from the fact that the Kingdom of Morocco had played and continues to play a crucial leadership role in African geopolitics by enhancing the regional integration progresses. We believe that our beautiful, promising continent should act as a one body as the challenges are multifaceted headed and can only be solved by joint, integrated approach.

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