In 'new scramble for Africa,' Japan slips behind

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s one-week diplomatic tour of Africa — his first trip to the continent since assuming office — will be a chance to reaffirm Japan’s role in the region and stimulate private investment amid growing Chinese and Russian influence.

Starting Saturday, the prime minister will travel to four African countries — Egypt, Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique — before a quick stop in Singapore. It will be the first time in nine years that a Japanese prime minister has made a round of visits to the continent.

Less than a month before the Group of Seven leaders meeting in Hiroshima, which Japan is chairing, Kishida will reaffirm Tokyo and the G7’s commitment to Ukraine and underscore the country’s renewed attention to developing nations. But on Ukraine, Kishida is unlikely to find a united front, given the African reaction to Moscow’s invasion has been fragmented, laying bare a long-standing ambiguous posture toward Russia.

Japan’s engagement with the so-called Global South — a term largely referring to developing countries in the southern hemisphere — has received renewed attention after the expression made its debut in Japan’s 2023 "diplomatic bluebook." As a further signal of its importance, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi is scheduled to tour five countries in Central and South America — Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Peru, Chile and Paraguay — while Kishida is in Africa.

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe went to great lengths to counterbalance China’s growing leverage in Africa, traveling to the continent with business leaders and including swaths of the continent in his "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" geopolitical concept, which Kishida has largely inherited. Japan has a long history of seeking the favor of African countries to gain their support for its own foreign policy goals, for instance securing a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

However, at the moment Tokyo appears to be the underdog in what has somewhat awkwardly been called “the new scramble for Africa” — a renewed rush to bolster diplomatic and economic ties with a region that is rich in natural resources and is one of the world’s fastest growing.

Among the Japanese shortcomings is the fundamental difference in the way Tokyo approaches the region compared with its neighbors, experts note.

“It has been very difficult for African countries to understand what Japan wants from them,” said Mitsugi Endo, a professor of African politics at the University of Tokyo. “Compared with Japan’s ambiguity, China has made clear from a very early stage what it wants from Africa. Japan, and in a certain sense the United States too, have taken a reactive stance, rather than proactive, responding to what other actors were doing.”

Beijing’s astonishing geopolitical and economic influence in Africa — both through loans and investments — stands in stark contrast to Tokyo’s posture.

According to the China Africa Research Initiative, a research center at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, flows of Chinese foreign direct investment rose from a puny $75 million in 2003 to $5 billion in 2021. China, already one of Africa's biggest trading partners, has been investing in sectors such as construction, mining and services.

In contrast, in the last 10 years, Japanese foreign direct investment stock in sub-Saharan Africa has dropped significantly, plummeting to $6.1 billion in 2021, roughly half of the amount invested in 2013. A 2022 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development showed that Japan ranked outside the top 10 investors in Africa, behind smaller economies such as the Netherlands or Switzerland.

At the end of March, another big player in the region, Russia, hosted over 40 African delegations for the second Russia-Africa International Parliamentary Conference, a preview of the Russia-Africa summit slated for July in St. Petersburg.

In addition to top Russian officials courting African leaders, its mercenary troops are active across the continent.

At the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit held in Washington last December, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo sounded the alarm over the large presence of Wagner mercenary forces close to his country's northern border with Burkina Faso. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s three-day trip to Ghana last month was viewed as an attempt to counterbalance growing Russian influence in West Africa.

Kishida's trip to the West African country is in line with U.S. strategy for the continent, but probably won't be sufficient to reassert Japan's influence.

Japan's strict restrictions on the export of weapons — currently under revision — and the need to maintain a balance with China, however precarious, mean that Tokyo’s room for maneuver in the region is comparatively limited, argues Endo.

“Japan cannot match China in numbers any longer," Endo said. “Although it may be impossible to win the trust of the African side in every sector, I believe that creating an awareness on the African side that Japan could be the only partner country in certain fields could be an important contribution, however small.”

During the final session of the Tokyo International Conference for African Development last August, which Kishida was forced to attend online as he had COVID-19, the Japanese government pledged to invest a hefty $30 billion over the next three years with the aim of strengthening Japan’s presence in the region.

Speaking at a joint symposium hosted with Keizai Doyukai, one of Japan’s largest business federations, on Monday, African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina praised recent Japanese efforts in venture capital investment.

“Perception is not reality. Know your market, know the place and have people on the ground,” he said, joining calls for the Japanese private sector to obtain more accurate information on African markets and move away from misconceptions that investments might be too risky.

Japan is struggling to diversify both its range of exports to the continent and the countries to which it is exporting.

A report published last month by the Japan External Trade Organization shows that aside from transportation equipment, ships and machinery — the country’s top three exports to the continent — Japan lags behind other G7 countries. On top of that, Tokyo’s trade relations tend to be concentrated in South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, while other nations remain largely unexplored.

The report concludes that, while other countries seem to have a competitive advantage in crucial sectors such as digital technology, there is room for Japanese businesses to expand their African operations.

As sub-Saharan Africa welcomes a demographic and economic boom — its population is projected to double by 2050, according to U.N. statistics — and Japan slowly loses its economic might, the relationship between the two is destined to change, says Endo.

“As Japan will progressively reach the status of middle power, we are now approaching a new phase where it needs to formulate a new strategic policy that could enhance its presence in Africa,” Endo said. “Japan’s stance should not only include the traditional ‘for Africa’ approach, it should also make clear how important Africa is to Japan as a region.”