Japan needs to get better at marketing and messaging:
Japan's Aid Needs More Imagination by
Mihir Sharma
Sharma correctly notes:
“Shinzo Abe’s
recent promise of $30 billion in financing to African countries over the next
three years shouldn’t have come as a great surprise. Quietly, over decades,
Japan has become the leading financier of growth-supporting infrastructure
across large swathes of the developing world. Perhaps too quietly.
In fact, few people
outside the country appreciate the scope of Japan’s overseas development
assistance (ODA). In several South and Southeast Asian countries, the country
is the largest provider of foreign assistance and low-cost loans, larger than
the U.S. or the World Bank.”