What’s New: Agenda takes shape

15 September 2003: The agenda for tackling Africa's vital development issues is taking shape as TICAD III comes rapidly closer. The three-day conference is due to open in Tokyo on Monday 29 September 2003.

It is expected to draw participants from all 53 African countries — with over 20 Heads of State expected to lead their delegations. Thirty-eight donor countries will be sending representatives, many of them Asian — a mark of how the TICAD process has been committed ever since its beginning a decade ago to South-South cooperation, especially in joint Asia-Africa ventures. Thirty-two international organizations are also expected to attend as well as 15 regional African organizations.

The conference is scheduled to open with a keynote speech from Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and immediately, in its the first plenary session, will get down to the business of reviewing the past ten years of the TICAD process in Africa, dating from the first Tokyo International Conference in 1993. A draft will be presented for a TICAD Tenth Anniversary Declaration at the end of the conference.

NEPAD, the New Partnership for Africa's Development, will constitute a central theme. Consideration of full implementation of NEPAD's aims, and how the international community can best contribute, will form the basis of the second plenary session on the first day.

The second day will be devoted to specially focused sessions on development priorities for Africa, such as on consolidation of peace, capacity building, human-centred development, infrastructure, agriculture, the private sector, and expansion of international partnership.

On the third and final day co-moderators from the previous day's focused sessions will report to the plenary, and the conference is expected to close by adopting the TICAD Tenth Anniversary Declaration. This declaration is likely to commit all TICAD stakeholders to work together for Africa's development in the future, affirming mutual respect and trust and pledging support for the principle of Africa's ownership of the development process.