━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
++++TCSF English Newsletter No. 8 ++++ March 30, 2007

Viva! Africa: People's Network across Continents
Published by TICAD Civil Society Forum (TCSF)
http://ticad-csf.net/eng/e-index.htm
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Dear colleagues,
Our English newsletter contains information about TCSF’s Activities
and Japanese aid support toward Africa. We hope to strengthen our
network with you by sharing information about our activities. Thank you.

━[Index]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

1, Activities of Working Groups
- TCSF White Paper Working Group
- Partnership Seminar Working Group
- Alert Working Group
2, Feature Stories
- Japan's Policy on African Development
- 4th Africa-Asia Business Forum
3, Topics of Japan-Africa Relation and Japan’s Aid support

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[1] Activities of Working Groups
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
------------------------------------
*Advocacy Working Group*
------------------------------------

1.Civic Commission for Africa (C-CfA) is almost ready to be
launched. Finally, 27 prominent NGOs from 20 countries have applied to
become member organizations of C-CfA. In
the case of multiple NGOs applying from the same country, they
are to discuss among themselves to reach a consensus as to which
organization represents the country as the member organization.
A fainal list of C-CfA members will be announced on April 1, 2007.
C-CfA's main task is to produce an advocacy paper "Voice of African
Civil Society" toward TICAD IV and G8 Summit, both to be held in 2008 in
Japan.

------------------------------------
*TCSF White Paper Working Group*
------------------------------------
The White Paper Working Group has finalized the second issue of the TCSF
White Paper. Its Japanese version is in press now and will be published
late April. English and French translations of the White Paper are in
progress and they will be released through the Web.

The contents of the third issue of the TCSF White Paper are in
discussion at the moment. The third issue will contain the concuding
issue of TCSF's evaluation and recommendation for TICAD IV. The Working
Group is discussing about main topics which are able to convey the
voices of the African and Japanese people toward Japan's ODA effectively.

------------------------------------
*Partnership Seminar Working Group*
------------------------------------
The Seminar Working Group has co-organized "Civil Society Session" as a
side event of "TICAD Conference on Energy and Environment for
Sustainable Development" on 22 and 23 March in Nairobi with G-CAP Kenya
"Jukwala Kupinga Umasikini" and ActionAid International Kenya. The title
of the session is "Environment and Energy for Sustainable Development
from a Pro-Poor Perspective". Please look at our English website for the
detailed programme and report.

------------------------------------
*Alert Working Group*
------------------------------------
The Alert Working Group published the 7th volume of the quarterly
magazine, "Africa Alert News" this month. The digest version in
Japanese and English will be available from our website soon.

Much of our effort has been poured into the recent additional
feature of "Africa News update" on our blog site to keep you updated
on the latest news from Africa. Please check our English blog site
at: http://blog.livedoor.jp/ticad_csf_english/


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[2] Feature Stories
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
------------------------------------
*Japan’s policy on African Development*
------------------------------------
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan released a new leaflet in
January 2007, titled "Japan’s cooperation policy on Africa: Aiming
to achieve Africa’s self-sustainable development." It is a summary
report outlining the philosophy of Japanese aid policies and the
corresponding efforts made under the framework of TICAD III which
includes the ambitious objective to double ODA to Africa by 2008.

The objective of Japanese policies is to implement African
development based on Africa’s 'ownership' and on 'partnership'
with the international community. At TICAD III, Japan presented an aid
scheme centered on the "three pillars of African development"
which are the underlying concepts in Japan's African policy-making
today. Other concepts of grave importance are 'human security',
'south-south cooperation' and 'African diversity' and the importance
of the former two was reaffirmed at the conference in 2003; they
together constitute the philosophy of TICAD.

The three pillars of African assistance, recently announced by Japan
are; consolidation of peace, human-centered development and poverty
eradication through economic development. What constitutes each
pillar and through what means Japan endeavors to achieve "self-
sustainable Africa" are as follows.

Firstly, Japan has proposed a comprehensive measure for
consolidation of peace in Africa which encompasses all aspects of
peace process from its promotion to post-conflict reconstruction.
This is to be achieved through maintaining order in conflicted
areas, systematic transition of governance, and regional
reconstruction and economic rehabilitation. The second pillar,
promotion of human-centered development aims to establish a firm
human resources ground for sustainable development in Africa in
the field of public health, water and sanitation, human resources
development and food. The third pillar is the poverty eradication
through economic development and this is realized through building
and improvement of infrastructure, promotion of trade and
investment, debt relief, and agriculture and rural development.

The three pillars of African assistance, in short crystallizes the
essence of ethos of Japan's policy towards prosperous Africa.

[Kindly be reminded that the article does not reflect the views of
TCSF and that it is a report on the new publication by the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, Japan.]
For further information, please refer to the MoFA site.
Japan's Cooperation Policy on Africa (Japanese, MOFA, January 2007)
http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/africa/pdfs/k_seisaku05.pdf

Japan's Policy on African Development - Prime Minister Koizumi's
Message to Africa in the context of the G8 Summit (MOFA, 6th July
2005)
http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/africa/policy.pdf

------------------------------------
*4th Africa-Asia Business Forum*
------------------------------------
The Fourth Africa-Tanzania Business Forum (AABF IV) was held in Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania during 12th-14th February 2007. AABF IV is
organized by the Japanese government, the Global Coalition for
Africa (GCA), the United Nations Office of the Special Advisor on
Africa (UN-OSAA), UNDP and the World Bank as part of the TICAD
process, aiming to eradicate poverty through promotion of trade and
business in Africa. The Forum is intended to offer a venue for
business talks between African and Asian companies to encourage
business ties between the two regions and provide information on
the business environment in Africa.

A total of 153 companies from Africa and Asia, including Japan
participated in the Forum and engaged energetically in business
negotiations, resulting in over USD 156 million worth of business
accords, exceeding the total sum of the past three forums. The Forum was
inaugurated by President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete of Tanzania whom at the
opening address commented, "Throughout the years, TICAD has evolved from
a mere conference to a major global collaborative framework for
promoting Africa's development. Indeed the successful conduct of the
previous Africa-Asia Business Forums is a testament to the efficacy of
the TICAD Initiative."

Other remarkable guests included Mr. Masayoshi Hamada, Vice-Minister
for Foreign Affairs, Japan, Mr. Bouna Semou Diouf, Director of the
TICAD/UNDP Africa Bureau and Senior Adviser to the Assistant
Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa, Mr.
Yoshiteru Uramoto, Deputy to the Director-General, UNIDO, and Dr.
Bamanga Tukur, Executive President of Africa Business Roundtable
(ABR) and Chair of the NEPAD Business Group.


For further information, please refer to the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Japan site:
http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/ticad/aabf_07_gai.html
http://www.undp.org/ticad2/news-20070223.shtml
Those interested may find the following article featured in January-
February 2007 issue of Africa investor insightful.
http://exchange.unido.org/upload/4429_AfricaInvestorArticle.pdf

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
【3】Topics of Japan-Africa Relation and Japan’s Aid support
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Jan. 21-
Visit to Japan by His Excellency Mr. Armando Emilio Guebuza,
President of the Republic of Mozambique.
http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/event/2006/12/1226.html
Feb. 11-
Mr. Hamada, Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs attend the Fourth
Africa-Asia Business Forum, Tanzania.
Feb. 27
Food Aid through the World Food Programme (WFP) to African
countries.
http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/announce/2007/2/0227-2.html
March 2
Assistance for Consolidation for Peace in Africa; Emergency grant
aid of USD 9.76 million to projects in Uganda, Sierra Leone,
Burundi and Liberia.
http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/announce/2007/3/0308.html
March 11
Visit to Japan by H.E. Mrs. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of
the Republic of Liberia
http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/africa/liberia/summit0703.html
March 12
Tokyo Workshop on Small Arms and Light Weapons by MOFA
http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/event/2007/3/0308-5.html
March 16
International Symposium: Capacity Building in Africa and the
Role of Japan, Tokyo.
http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/africa/sympo0703.html
March 22-23
TICAD Ministerial Conference on Energy and Environment for
Sustainable Development in Nairobi, Kenya.
http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/event/2007/3/0308.html

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
*TCSF operates an English mailing list for facilitating communication
between TCSF and African CSOs and among African CSOs. If your address
is not on the list and wish to join, please contact TCSF
office@ticad-csf.net
------------------------------------------------------
TICST Civil Society Forum (TCSF)
http://ticad-csf.net/eng/e-index.htm
news@ticad-csf.net
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━