By Joao Filipe Papel / Special to The Japan News

5:50 JST, August 20, 2025

For more than 30 years, the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) has stood as a beacon of engagement between Japan and Africa. The forum was established in 1993 to renew global focus on Africa’s development and foster peace through partnership. Prioritizing inclusivity and African ownership, TICAD has been co-organized with African and international institutions from the outset. This legacy is admirable.

Yet today TICAD stands at a crossroads. Africa and the world have changed, and the old donor-recipient paradigm has run its course. It is time for a bold reimagining of TICAD, to shift from an aid-centric model to an investment-focused paradigm by transforming the Tokyo International Conference for African Development into a true “Tokyo Investment Conference for African Development.”

This would be more than a semantic tweak. It would represent a major shift from passive aid to cocreated strategic partnerships that emphasize African agency, human capital, technology transfer and sustainable infrastructure.

Decades of development aid have delivered mixed results and often perpetuated a one-sided narrative of benefactor and beneficiary, donor and recipient. As U.N. Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed urged at TICAD 8 in 2022, we must “shift the perception of Africa as a dependent continent to one that is a key actor on the global stage, with the same rights and standing as any........

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