東アジア的発想によるアフリカ成長戦略への貢献

抄録

This paper discusses how Japan could and should enhance African growth strategies, by bringing the East Asian perspectives of development and aid into international growth support. More specifically, it argues the usefulness of complementing the “framework approach” of typical Western donors who are principle-oriented and interested in setting the framework right, with the East Asian “ingredient approach” which pays greater attention to real-sector economy, including sectoral composition or industrial organization, and concrete facts on the ground.

After the introduction, the paper is organized into four sections. The first section reviews selected growth literature that has contributed to the recent growth resurgence in the global development debates and discusses their contributions and limitations. Notably, while the Growth Diagnostics framework (Hausmann, Rodrik, Velasco 2005) marks an important departure from the “Washington Consensus,” it remains confined to the framework approach, by focusing on the discovery of general weaknesses relative to global norms (instead of the country's unique strengths). Neither does it offer practical methodologies for concrete problem-solving, since it searches for desirable policies without considering political and administrative feasibility. The second section analyzes the key features of East Asian “ingredient approach,” by reviewing the development experiences of successful East Asian countries, as well as Japan's aid approach. Over the past decades, the East Asian countries overcame development challenges by building new competitiveness from the country's strengths, setting specific goals and taking concrete actions to achieve the goals. Japan's aid in East Asia has also assisted partner countries in identifying both economically desirable and politically feasible solutions through continuous policy dialogue and think-together approach, goal orientation and field-based concrete thinking. While time-consuming, these processes have contributed to finding a solution suitable for a country-specific case (instead of common answers). The third section presents a case study on Ethiopia, who is strongly interested in the East Asian development experiences and is mobilizing massive donor support to growth promotion. The analysis of the nature of Ethiopia's ownership and the existing growth support by the Western donors suggests that there exists a good potential for Japan to make complementary contributions to the country's growth promotion, especially by offering concrete policy alternatives and practical approaches to problem-solving. The last section concludes by discussing the above implications for Japan's TICAD IV commitment to supporting Africa's growth and sustainable development.