Five things to learn from Ticad

The curtain closed on the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (Ticad VI) in Nairobi, Kenya, on Sunday with goodies from Japan for Africa. But there were plenty of lessons any observer could see.

• Africa has hope, and spoilers too
There were up to 36 heads of state or their representatives from 54 African countries and Japan.
Add representatives of the African Union (AU), UN and other countries attending as observers and the list could go up to 60.
But at the photo session on Saturday on the steps of the KICC entrance, the African story of hope and spoilers played in the open.
Here, we had Burkina Faso’s Roch Christian Kabore, the man who took over leadership after the ouster of Blaise Campaore by an angry public.
Then we had Faustin-Archange Touadera who is tasked with rebuilding the Central Africa Republic following years of violence.
Yet, there was also Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, a man who has hang onto power into his ripe old age despite public protests; and Obiang Nguema Mbasogo whose Equatorial Guinea is a perennial story of how not to nurture a free society.
The fact that they were all here means we may have to live with them in problems and in happiness for a while longer.

• Japanese bureaucracy discouraging
The Japanese like doing things by following a particular order.
But at this summit, the problem started with accreditation.
The folks managing this initially just put the announcement on the Ticad website where few could see it.
And as the function approached and the deadline passed, an email was circulated asking for one more chance for those who missed to get accredited.
Names were sent, but somehow, the organisers may have changed their minds about giving further ID cards to journalists.
That locked out many reporters and the evidence was there to see.
Inside the KICC, the press centre remained largely vacant because there were few journalists allowed in.
Worse still, the Japanese manning the information desk introduced a weird system of ‘escorting’ every journalist who wanted to access the plenary halls, or side events. It put off more journalists.
The result was that most side events were missed, plenary discussions ignored and the outcome underreported.
Perhaps the Japanese will learn from this next time.

• Conferences may boost tourist numbers
Ticad cost hundreds of millions of shillings to host.
But Kenyan government officials argued they didn’t pay all the money.
Some of it came from Japan, UNDP and various Japanese corporations.
The same officials say Kenya got billions worth of hotel bills paid, travel services offered and other items purchased by the estimated 10,000 delegates.
Well, these conferences are an inconvenience to other city dwellers, but it is not bad business to get Sh12 billion on a weekend.
If taken in the context of the fallen tourist numbers at the Coast which were occasioned by security fears, these gatherings will be the lifeblood of our hospitality industry. We just need to ensure they come on weekends so other folks can enjoy the traffic jams in peace.
• Rivalry as Asian giants go for a piece of Africa
The Indians had their India-Africa Forum in New Delhi in October 2015 where they pledged $10 billion.
The Chinese had theirs in Johannesburg where they promised $60 billion.
The Japanese seem to be playing catch-up, but they have also said they will send in $30 billion by 2018. That would be $62 billion since 2012.
So are they pumping so much into Africa? Love? No…
The Chinese may announce big deals, but they often ensure the contractor for that project is a Chinese firm.
The Indians and the Japanese on the other hand are seeking to oust the Chinese on the international stage, so it starts with Africa.
However, the story is hidden in the imbalance of trade with them.
Kenya, for example, is the largest beneficiary of Tokyo’s financial aid, reaching Ksh450 billion between 2012 and 2016.
But Japan exports goods worth Ksh36.4 billion annually into Kenya, against Nairobi’s Ksh2.8 billion.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke of improving market access, but it is not known whether this includes balancing the trade.
What came out of the conference was that Tokyo will help Africa do such things as value addition and develop industries, and modernise agriculture.

• Long summits make speakers to repeat themselves
Dr Akiwumi Adesina, the Nigerian who currently heads the African Development Bank is an eloquent man.
He speaks, sometimes without glancing at his notes, an indication that the former Nigerian Agriculture Minister knows these things like the back of his hand.
At Ticad, his weakness came out when he was asked to speak at several events within the same building.
It was repetition.
At an event to celebrate the Sasakawa Association, a Japanese philanthropy organisations, Dr Adesina called for modernisation of agriculture, lamenting how he bought chocolate in Europe made by a company that claims to have been making them since 1886, by importing cocoa from Africa.
The continent produces 70 per cent of the world’s cocoa, but eats only 2 per cent of the chocolate made from it.
The problem? We Africans like selling raw materials rather than make them into something else and sell at a better price. Good argument.
But then the AfDB chief went to another plenary on private investments and repeated the argument before saying the same thing at another forum.
You could argue that this is emphasis, where folks who know the problem keep talking about it.
But when half of the audience heard you a few minutes earlier say those things, it may sound like a stuck record.
The Nigerian development banker is, however, not the only culprit.
Heads of states, civil society groups and chief executive officers were always speaking about value addition, transformation, sustainable development and all those things.

Aggrey writes for the the Daily Nation.  He joined the Nation Media Group upon graduation in 2009