UNESCO chief calls for Japan's greater commitment to Africa

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TOKYO, Oct. 1 Kyodo -
U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Director General
Koichiro Matsuura, who will leave the post in November after a 10-year stint,
called for Japan's greater commitment to Africa as he introduced a new book
based on his nearly half a century of exchanges with the continent as a
diplomat.
In a recent interview with Kyodo News in Tokyo, Matsuura urged Japan's new
government to pledge to increase its official development assistance,
particularly stressing the need to continue to provide grants-in-aid to poor
African nations.
''Yen loans will be effective in supporting Asian economies, but extremely poor
countries in Africa cannot repay such loans and only grants-in-aid will work,''
Matsuura said following the launch of his new book written in Japanese, titled
''Africa no Shoko'' (A Ray of Hope for Africa).
''Japan promised in the TICAD meeting to double grants for Africa and I hope
the aid will increase evenly across the continent, without concentration on
particular nations,'' he said.
In May last year, then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda pledged at the Tokyo
International Conference on African Development in Yokohama to double Japan's
bilateral grants for African nations by 2012.
The former deputy foreign minister and head of the Foreign Ministry's economic
cooperation bureau deplored the situation in which Japan has been slashing its
overall foreign aid due to tight fiscal conditions. ''I want Japan to play a
responsible role according to its economic weight,'' he said.
He pointed out that Japan's ODA relative to its gross national income stood at
0.18 percent in 2008, far below the 0.7 percent target set by the United
Nations, and anticipated that the government led by Prime Minister Yukio
Hatoyama will expand the aid.
The 72-year-old UNESCO chief, whose exchanges with Africa started in 1961 when
he was posted to the Japanese Embassy in Ghana as a diplomat, said the U.N.
agency has strived to promote literacy education programs and recognized many
items of intangible cultural heritage on the continent.
His book provides information on all of Africa's 53 independent nations based
on his personal experience. Matsuura has set foot in all the independent
nations in the continent except for Somalia and expected that the book will
deepen the understanding of Japanese academics, business people and students on
Africa.
''We always hear negative news from Africa such as dictatorship, hunger, AIDS
and civil strife and people think that's all about the continent,'' Matsuura
said. ''But I want people to see the bright side as well, such as the emergence
of decent leaders and democracy taking root in some countries, to grasp the
whole picture.''
Matsuura was elected to his first six-year term as the UNESCO director general
in 1999 while serving as Japan's ambassador to France. In October 2005, he was
reelected to a second four-year term with many votes cast by African nations.
He is set to serve out as the Paris-based organization's head on Nov. 14, to be
succeeded by Bulgaria's Irina Bokova, the first woman and the first eastern
European to hold the top job at UNESCO.
==Kyodo
2009-10-01 22:23:21