MATSUURA: Kenya benefits from active role in Expo 2025 Osaka-Kansai

Expo 2025 Osaka-Kansai officially opened on April 13, themed “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.” A total of 158 countries, including Kenya, are taking part in the six-month event.

As many readers already know, these International Expositions (usually termed ‘Expos’) are regularly held in different parts of the world to promote new technologies, foster exchange between nations and cultures, and in general address global challenges and seek new ideas to resolve them.

I hope that during the expo ending on October 13, the exhibitions at pavilions and the events will further promote both Japan’s understanding of Kenya and the exchanges between Japan and Kenya.

In particular, on the dates around June 24, which is the Expo’s National Day of Kenya, we will have many events that will drive our mutual understanding and exchanges forward.

We need to pay attention to them. If you see the expo’s subthemes in detail, you will find the expo’s ways of looking at human lives are extremely various and very closely attached to the different realities of living.

For example, how to extend human lives through medicine; how to learn unknown aspects of human lives through science; how to connect human lives through people-to-people exchanges; how to enrich human lives through culture; how to increase the value of human lives through worthwhile activities, and so on.

Osaka had already hosted an expo back in 1970.

It is too simple and wrong to judge that Expo 1970 Osaka looked at the future of humanity only through the lens of affluence and convenience to be brought about by technology. Nevertheless, by comparing the two events through the filter of the period as long as 55 years, I feel that the way Japan treats humanity has acquired certain maturity.

Kenya also faces the variety, complexity and difficulty of human lives that are sometimes different from those of Japan. And Kenyans cheerfully confront them and overcome them.

I hope that as many Kenyans as possible will visit the expo so the it can offer ideas to better overcome Kenya’s challenges, and that Japan can learn from Kenya’s challenges.

Although the expo’s themes are extensive, I have particular hope that Japan and Kenya will learn from each other in technology and industry.

More than 120 Japanese companies are operating in Kenya and many others are planning to do so. They commonly wish to grow within Africa, being helped by the growing demand in the continent where an estimated 40 per cent of the global population will reside in 2050.

It will be too late to start operations in 2050. Now is the time to enter the African market, and Kenya is the point from which to enter it.

Kenya is their preferred entry point, because it is an English-speaking country; it is easy to be connected with Japan through the Indian Ocean; it has a highly educated workforce; it welcomes foreign country nationals and corporations with generosity; and is politically stable.

Kenya therefore stands to achieve substantial economic growth with the help of Japanese capital, technology and innovative ideas. The possibility of joint growth and joint prosperity is wide open.

Here is an interesting question: Will the commercial operations in Kenya promise instant expansion of sales in Africa for the incoming investors? The reality is a bit harder than that.

The scarcity of formal sector employment, particularly in manufacturing, despite high workforce education and stagnating productivity in agriculture, are major reasons economic growth has not been translated into a rapid expansion of the middle class.

As expansion of the middle-class is critical for the increase in disposable income and desire to purchase, the two intertwined sources of the exponential growth in demand, the lack of it is frustrating.

Further, although an economic bloc has been established with other members of the East Africa Community, such as Uganda and Tanzania, a large and efficient single economy that seamlessly connects members’ markets has not yet been achieved.

In reality, a limited number of goods move freely within the single market. The movement of goods is hampered by various restrictions imposed by members with the consideration of foreign policies and the protection of domestic industries.

The true growth in demand will take place as a consequence of a patient process of removing these obstacles, step by step. I would identify three major factors that are central to this process:

First is to renew our recognition that, in Kenya, it is necessary to develop infrastructure that will lead to increased employment in industrial sectors, including manufacturing.

Second is an undertaking to increase agricultural productivity.

Third is increasing efficiency in the market connection with neighbouring countries.

Kenya and Japan have been engaged in addressing these issues, and now we should double down on our efforts.

What should be the exact way of doing this? That is a most appropriate question to discuss and to find specific answers during half-year period of Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai.

I encourage all of you to take part actively in this discussion.

The writer is Japanese ambassador to Kenya