Okada pledges Japan will fulfill ODA promise to Africa+

ARUSHA, Tanzania, May 2 Kyodo -
Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada reiterated Sunday that the country will
make good on its promise to double its official development assistance for
Africa.
Speaking during a ministerial-level meeting of the Tokyo International
Conference on African Development, a forum to discuss Japan's commitment to
African development, Okada said steady progress has been made toward achieving
the goal of raising Japan's ODA to $1.8 billion a year by 2012.
After making the pledge at a TICAD meeting in Yokohama in May 2008, Japan
provided assistance to the continent of $1.75 billion in 2008 and $1.65 billion
in 2009, up from an annual average of around $900 million in the five-year
period from 2003.
''We are headed toward the target,'' Okada told a plenary session of the
two-day TICAD Ministerial Follow-UP Meeting that began Sunday in the northern
Tanzanian city of Arusha.
The Group of Eight industrial powers agreed at a summit in Gleneagles,
Scotland, in 2005 to increase annual aid for Africa by $25 billion by 2010.
However, only around half of the amount is believed to have been provided so
far.
In his speech on Sunday, Okada said he would like to urge Japan's G-8 partners
-- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States -- to
step up their efforts to support Africa ''with the same resolve as Japan.''
==Kyodo