Prime Minister Fumio Kishida took a week-long tour of Africa over Golden Week, an attempt to raise Japan’s profile and that of the developed world more generally on the continent.

A key motivation for the visit was the desire to balance China’s presence there, which has been growing as a result of increasingly vibrant trade and investment links. But it is vitally important that Japan and the West see and engage with Africa for its own worth and not merely as a way to counter Beijing’s expanding international influence.

Kishida visited four nations — Egypt, Mozambique, Ghana and Kenya — during his trip, his first to Africa since taking office and the first time in nine years that a Japanese prime minister has gone to the continent. The last time a prime minister visited multiple countries in Africa was in January 2014.