国連アフリカ特別顧問室主催アフリカ対話「文化アイデンティティとオーナーシップ」における石兼大使ステートメント
令和3年5月26日
(As delivered)
Thank you very much, USG Duarte,I think most of the things have been said by my dear colleague Ambassadors and yourself, Duarte, but let me just make a few words from the viewpoint of Japan.
I also want to thank the OSAA, the AU and UNESCO for organizing this year’s ADS and for reuniting us in support of Africa overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic and its negative impacts.
First and foremost, we must address the urgent need to end the lingering effects of the pandemic in Africa by ensuring equitable access to vaccines. In this connection, Japan will co-host the COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) Summit with Gavi next week. Japan will do its utmost make further contributions in addition to the 200 million US dollars already disbursed. In the meantime, Japan is supporting African countries to strengthen vaccine delivery and inoculation systems through the “Last One Mile Support initiative” with a view to realizing universal health coverage (UHC).
Second, to alleviate the socio-economic burden on African countries, we need to take holistic approaches, breaking silos, placing people at the center, and considering multi-dimensional aspects of the challenges we are facing. Yes, Cooperation to fight against illicit financial fraud should be intensified. Yes, we need to keep providing ODA which continues to play an important role, but also, we need think about how we can best bring in the private sector and private resources into play in the African continent. And we reiterate the need for all public and private creditors to participate in debt relief measures in a transparent manner. The G20’s Common Framework could be instrumental in helping those countries.
Third, we must continue to work on peacebuilding. So in that regard, We highly commend the work of the Peacebuilding Commission shared by my dear colleague Mohamed Edrees. We continue to invest in institution-building in this regard, and human capacity-building, which are keys to strengthening Africa's ownership and living out “African solutions to African problems”.
In this regard, the New Approach for Peace and Stability in Africa (NAPSA), and initiative we launched at TICAD in 2019, assists in strengthening governmental administrative, judicial, and legislative systems.
Also, at TICAD7, Japan committed to inviting 3,000 young African students to Japan over 6 years. Furthermore, in partnership with ITU and Saudi Arabia, Japan has started the Connect2Recover initiative in Africa, aiming to reinforce digital infrastructures and ecosystems and support the digital transformation in the areas of digital finance, e-education, e-health, e-government, and teleworking.
Lastly about the theme of this year of the Africa Dialogue Series, which is “Culture, Identity, and Ownership”. The theme is about culture, but it goes of course far beyond culture. The culture through enhancing identity can be the uniting power of the community and will enormously contribute to the stability of the community. Culture can be seen through economic development through tourism, but more than that, sense of ownership measured by culture is the basis of economic development. But culture can also be a source conflict if tolerance toward differences does not exist.
Japan joins hands with African friends to promote Africa’s diverse cultural heritage. We will host an online event together with the Permanent Mission of Tunisia and the TICAD Co-Organizers entitled: “Boosting Africa’s Transformative Power of Tourism: Harnessing Technology & Innovation, Youth & Women Entrepreneurship” on June 21st.
Allow me finally to mention TICAD8 to be held next year in Tunisia. We look forward to furthering our partnership with Africa towards TICAD8, co-organized with the Government of Tunisia, OSAA, AU, UNDP and the World Bank.
I thank you.