The mood of hope at the conclusion Monday of the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development was mingled with uncertainty about the steps in store for the conference and Japan-Africa relations as a whole, especially regarding political exchanges at the highest levels.
Though many individual states remain mired in poverty or civil strife, the continent enjoys annual GDP growth of over 5 percent on average. Going into the TICAD V conference the most pressing questions were how to sustain a hard-won prosperity that has seen the middle and upper middle classes rise, and how nations in conflict can be peacefully stabilized.
During the three-day meeting in Yokohama, presidents, prime ministers, the World Bank and nongovernmental organizations all spoke of the need for continued international investment in traditional large-scale aid projects: roads, bridges, dams, railroads, port facilities, new electricity grids. They also called for Japanese and international investment not just to increase GDP, but also to provide employment and thus political stability.
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