Japan courts Africa on UN Security Council reform
Japan’s Kyodo News reports on prime minister Shinzo Abe’s bridgebuilding with African leaders on Security Council reform: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will host the first meeting between leaders of Africa and Japan to address U.N. Security Council reform on Monday in Yokohama, on the sidelines of a fifth international meeting on African development, the government ...
Japan's Kyodo News reports on prime minister Shinzo Abe's bridgebuilding with African leaders on Security Council reform:
Japan’s Kyodo News reports on prime minister Shinzo Abe’s bridgebuilding with African leaders on Security Council reform:
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will host the first meeting between leaders of Africa and Japan to address U.N. Security Council reform on Monday in Yokohama, on the sidelines of a fifth international meeting on African development, the government said Thursday.
Invited are Sierra Leone’s President Ernest Bai Koroma as the coordinator of the "Committee of 10" African countries, other leaders from the group and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, chairwoman of the African Union Commission.
With the summit meeting, Tokyo aims to enhance dialogue and cooperation with African countries for an early realization of the stalled reform, given the significance they play on the matter, it said…
African leaders will be in Japan to attend the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, a summit meeting on African development held every five years, to be held Saturday through Monday in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo.
The Africa group‘s voting weight in the General Assembly and its relative unity on many organizational questions make it a critical player. To this point, the four leading candidates for permanent seats–Japan, Brazil, Germany, and India (known collectively as the G4)–have struggled to break through with African states, which have insisted on at least two new permanent seats for the continent and that all new permanent members must have the veto power. Neither condition is necessarily compatible with the G4 view of how the Council should be reformed.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
More from Foreign Policy

Saudi-Iranian Détente Is a Wake-Up Call for America
The peace plan is a big deal—and it’s no accident that China brokered it.

The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense
If Israel and its supporters want the country to continue receiving U.S. largesse, they will need to come up with a new narrative.

Putin Is Trapped in the Sunk-Cost Fallacy of War
Moscow is grasping for meaning in a meaningless invasion.

How China’s Saudi-Iran Deal Can Serve U.S. Interests
And why there’s less to Beijing’s diplomatic breakthrough than meets the eye.