The sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) ended August 28, 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya in the presence of Japanese Prime Minister and more than thirty African Heads of State and Government, among them Ellen Johnson SIRLEAF, Chairperson of the ECOWAS Conference of Heads of State and Government.
The TICAD sixth meeting was marked by the signing of seventy-three Agreements between twenty two Japanese companies and universities and African states. It focused on three major themes, namely: promoting structural economic transformation through economic diversification and industrialization; promoting resilient health systems for quality of life; and promoting social stability for shared prosperity.
The Economic Community of West African States Commission was represented at the meeting by a delegation of several members headed by the President, Marcel. Alain DE SOUZA. On the sidelines, Mr. DE SOUZA had exchanges with Mrs. Ellen Johnson-SIRLEAF, President of Liberia and Chairperson of the ECOWAS Conference of Heads of State and Government.
The President of the ECOWAS Commission has also had discussions with several other personalities, including Ms. Nkosazana Dlamini-ZUMA, President of African Union Commission. He also met with Mr. Hiroshi KATO, Vice President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). With M. KATO, President DE SOUZA had a working session on ECOWAS priority projects under the Community Development Programme (CDP) and new strategies for ECOWAS-Japan cooperation. After the talks, an invitation was made to Japan to participate in the Roundtable on ECOWAS Community Development Programme (CDP), scheduled for end March 2017 in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
Note that TICAD is a summit meeting on African development organized jointly by the Government of Japan, the United Nations, through the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Commission of the African Union (AU) and the World Bank.
The first Tokyo conference held in 1993 marked the beginning of an ongoing process of support for Africa and the consensus around the priorities of African development. Japan co-organized six series of conferences that are TICAD I (1993); TICAD II (1998); TICAD III (2003); TICAD IV (2008); TICAD V (2013); and TICAD VI (2016).