Japan has decided to increase two fold its official development assistance (ODA) to African nations in the next five years.
Announcing the decision at a cabinet meeting earlier Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said that the ODA will mostly be earmarked for construction of infrastructure including road networks, improvement of maternity healthcare and agricultural productivity.
After the meeting, Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said that both grants and loans are included in the ODA spike.
But details of its allocation will be unveiled by Prime Minister Fukuda during the Tokyo International Conference on African Development scheduled for May 28-30 in Yokohama, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura at a news conference.
Preliminary figures released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that Japan's ODA spending decreased by 30.1 percent year-on-year in real terms to 7.69 billion U.S. dollars.
Source:Xinhua
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