Mr. Chairman, President Bäge, and distinguished delegates,

It is a great honour for me to address the thirty-first session of the Governing Council of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. First of all, I would like to sincerely congratulate IFAD on the thirtieth anniversary of its foundation, and express my great respect to IFAD for its role and achievements in promoting rural development since its inception.

Mr. Chairman,

We are still faced with the reality that nearly 70% of the poor people in the developing countries live in rural areas, with their lives relying mainly on agriculture.

In light of this situation, agricultural development can surely contribute to poverty reduction through increased growth. Also, agriculture is closely linked to important global issues such as food, water and climate change.

From this perspective, Japan highly appreciates the activities of IFAD. Especially, we share IFAD’s basic principles to mainly target extremely poor rural areas, and to set out its strategic objectives to prioritize such measures as capacity building and improved access to financial services and markets, respecting the self- help efforts of the developing countries to overcome poverty.

This year will provide Japan with a very important opportunity to further promote international cooperation. As you might be aware, Japan will convene the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development, known as TICAD IV, in Yokohama in May, and in June we will host the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit.

TICAD is a policy forum which Japanese government co-hosts every five years with the United Nations and the World Bank, where African development issues are discussed together with high-level participants from African nations and international organizations. As for IFAD, I am very delighted that President Bäge expressed his strong commitment at an early stage to personally participate in TICAD IV.

Towards a vibrant Africa, policy debate at TICAD IV will centre around three priorities, namely, “Boosting Economic Growth”, “Ensuring Human Security” and “Addressing Environmental Issues and Climate Change”. Since the activities of IFAD are highly relevant to all of them, we are expecting that IFAD will make a remarkable contribution to the TICAD process.

I’d like to take this opportunity to outline the Japanese policies for agricultural and rural development in Africa.

Our guiding principle in this area is to foster agriculture with a view to supporting sustainable economic growth, and to assist human resource development and community-level capacity building based upon the concept of “Human Security” on which Japan places high value. By these measures we aim to bring people out of the vicious cycle of famine and poverty and to encourage a movement towards a vibrant Africa.

Under this principle, Japan gives priority to the next three policies.

Firstly, Japan intends to implement a comprehensive program to promote rice production. Japan has a comparative advantage in the assistance of rice production technique and irrigation technique. In this regard, IFAD also enjoys a strong advantage of having a vice president, Mr. Nwanze, who made a significant contribution to research in rice production in Africa as a former Director-General of the Africa Rice Centre (WARDA). We are grateful to know that he dedicated himself to developing and disseminating NERICA rice for a long time, as well as to forging a strong relationship between Japan and the Africa Rice Centre.

Secondly, in addition to promoting rice production, Japan will provide various supports in the field of agriculture and fisheries, including research and development, technology transfer, infrastructure building and provision of machinery and materials.

Thirdly, we will assist the improvement of human resource and planning capabilities with a view to enabling product development. What we call “One-Village One-Product Movement” provides a good example of this policy.

Japan seeks to implement these measures in corporation with IFAD and other international organizations such as FAO, WFP and CGIAR, as well as with initiatives from Africa such as NEPAD and AGRA.

For the development of the agricultural sector in Africa, it is essential that the international community provides assistance to the whole process of agriculture covering crop cultivation, harvesting, and distribution to consumers.

To this end, it is important that international organizations including IFAD concentrate on areas of its comparative advantage, and work effectively in close cooperation with other organizations.

Mr.Chairman,
In implementing these measures, Japan recognizes IFAD as an important partner, Japan will continue to assist agricultural and rural development in an active manner. At the same time, as a major donor, we will keep monitoring the activities of IFAD.

To conclude, Mr. Chairman, I would like to reaffirm our sincere intention to further strengthen the cooperative relationship with IFAD, which has extensive knowledge and expertise on rural and agricultural development at field levels as well as policy formulation level.

Thank you very much.