Summary
- Japan has been a crucial development partner to Africa for decades. However, its traditional aid-focused approach has slowly been tempered by new concerns. This is creating new opportunities for cooperation but raising questions about the increasingly geopolitical framing of the relationship against the background of the rapid expansion of the continent’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China.
- This paper tracks the evolution of Japan-Africa engagement across three fields: infrastructure and energy provision, strategic minerals and geopolitical alliance-building.
- It argues that while renewed engagement, driven by the Japanese government’s emerging priorities of mineral supply chains and strategic competition, brings a fresh and expanded focus on Africa, Japan’s private sector does not necessarily share this.
