Japan and Africa

Abstract

Japan’s relationship with Subsaharan Africa provides a textbook case-study of its foreign policy toward every ‘developing’ region. Tokyo has followed a neomercantilist strategy of concentrating on securing Japan’s regional geoeconomic interest while skirting any political entanglements. The region’s few mass consumer markets and vast mineral deposits are ‘captured’ by huge Japanese consortia backed by government loans and ‘aid’ largely tied to purchases of Japanese goods and services. The result is a classic dependency relationship whereby the African country increasingly relies on Japanese goods, services and capital for its economic livelihood, while Tokyo minimises its own potential dependence on that country by spreading its economic bets across the developing world. Although Africa’s share in Japan’s trade has never exceeded 3 per cent of Japan’s total trade, it is important in several key import and export products. Some African countries have become important markets for such Japanese products as telecommunications, heavy electrical equipment, vehicles and consumer electronics, and a vital source of such resources as chromium, vanadium, manganese, uranium and platinum.