In its mid-term report released on January 21, 2008, the Advisory Council to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan on International Cooperation emphasized the importance, in regard to global warming, of providing comprehensive support to African nations for the construction of infrastructure, development of human resources, design of systems and policies, and build-up of distribution systems and markets, as well as expansion of official development assistance (ODA) funding.
Taking the upcoming Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development and the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit into account, both to be held in Japan, the report emphasized the importance of involving agriculture, including agro-business, in order to take advantage of unutilized resources and to widely mitigate poverty in a sustainable way in Africa. For this purpose the council suggests that the ministry aids the governments of developing countries in capacity building through policy dialogue and support in drawing up development plans, as well as support in constructing infrastructure across wide areas.
During the 1990s Japan was the top ODA donor in the world. But since the late 1990s, its ODA budget decreased rapidly by about 38 percent, from 1,168.7 billion yen (U.S.$10.3 billion) in 1997 to 729.3 billion yen ($6.45 billion) in 2007. Although the ratio of ODA expenditures to African nations to total ODA expenditures has remained constant at about 10 percent, the actual amount has been halved in ten years.
The African continent is one of the world's regions most vulnerable to global warming. In its 2007 ODA White Paper, the ministry announced its key policy to support African countries in addressing flooding and droughts linked to climate change by aiding them with skill development and system building to monitor climate changes, improvement of energy efficiency and energy saving by using Japanese technologies for energy saving and utilizing renewable energy, and preservation of forests.
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