Looking back on the Tokyo International Conference on African Development and its achievements over the past 20 years, Masaki Inaba touched on the number of flights that now directly connect Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
"Korean Air provides flights straight from Seoul to Kenya. Ethiopian Airlines also provides access between China and Africa without any transit," said Inaba, a program director at the Africa Japan Forum nongovernmental organization.
Yet despite the TICAD platform marking its 20th anniversary this year, there are still no flight services that directly connect Japan with any destination in the continent's sub-Saharan areas.