Message from Ambassador

Having passed 5 months since its opening, the popularity of Expo　2025 Osaka, Kansai keeps growing. Each day, 130 thousand people visit the Expo, which displays the exhibitions by 158 countries all over the world. Through the visits, the Japanese people collectively revisit the importance to feel the touch of the international community and to learn from it. The number of the visitors to the Kenyan exhibition is reported to be, on average, 13 thousand per day. No less than 10% of all the Expo visitors deepen their affinity with the Kenyan culture and goods through the exhibition. We cannot ignore its significance.

We had the Kenyan National Day of Expo on 24^th, June. With the attendance of Cabinet Secretary Lee Kinyanjui for Investment, Trade and Industry, close to one thousand Japanese watched the National Day ceremony. Has there been any occasion in the past in which so many Japanese experience, and then are overwhelmed, en masse by the power and richness of the Kenyan culture in a shared single space in time and place? I believe that this was a truly epoch-making event for the promotion of mutual understanding between Japan and Kenya. Equally important, CS Kinyanjui has come back to Kenya with very clear ideas in his mind about how to advance Kenya’s industry and investment relationship with Japan from now. I look forward to working together with him for that cause.

Now, we have TICAD9 one month ahead of us. The magnitude of the turmoil of the international politics is getting bigger and bigger, and Africa is exposed to this turmoil as much as the other regions of the world, or arguably more than the other regions. I hope that Africa will absorb the shock of the turmoil and navigate its own destiny without being overwhelmed by the turmoil. Therefore, I hope that TICAD9 will discuss how Africa should build its resilience to do exactly that and how Japan should help Africa realizing that resilience. Nevertheless, the vulnerability of Africa will not disappear instantly. The United Nations and other multilateral institutions have been offering safeguard against the vulnerability to Africa. We need to save the multilateral institutions in danger so that they can continue their safeguard function. So, I hope that TICAD9 will also discuss how Japan and Africa should work together aiming at sustaining multilateral safeguard.

Kenya is a major country of Africa and Japan’s major partner at TICAD. It is more than natural that Kenya should play a major role in the discussion. For that to happen, I earnestly hope that President Ruto himself will attend TICAD9.

Another hope of me is to strengthen further the bilateral relations between Japan and Kenya, exploiting the TICAD opportunity. The two countries are intensifying their consideration on what are possible in the areas of industry/infrastructure, agriculture, and trade. In the area of security, I would like to pursue not only the traditional security cooperation centering around defense cooperation, but also security cooperation in other aspects such as land security responding to the effects of climate change. Underpinned by the longstanding friendship between our two countries, Japan’s business and investment relations with Kenya has been expanding constantly, and Japan and Kenya are important partners to work together closely to promote “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.” It is an opportune moment to advance kind of bold cooperations which are commensurate with this unique closeness of our two countries. We should also aim at making these bilateral cooperations part of the strengthening of African resilience and the strengthening of the multilateral safeguard. In other words, higher resilience of Kenya needs to be integral part of higher resilience of Africa, and effective combination of the bilateral cooperations with Kenya and the safeguard function of multilateral institutions should contribute to the rebuilding of multilateral institutions.

How much progress will the remaining one month allow us to make? I would like to go as far as possible, relying on your support more that I have been. Taking this opportunity, I ask you to double down your support for us.