TANAKA Akihiko

Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the World Bank Group (WBG, 1) held their first high level dialogue to strengthen their ongoing partnership in addressing development challenges with focus on results.

The dialogue –which took place at the JICA Headquarters on July 10-11 and attended by WBG President Jim Yong Kim and JICA President Akihiko Tanaka– centered on health (Universal health Coverage: UHC, 2) and disaster risk management/disaster prevention and climate change. Both leaders would like to see these become the central themes of the post 2015 development agenda.

The discussions covered three regions of particular interest to the two institutions, namely East Asia & Pacific, South Asia and Africa. Japan hosts the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) every five years, together with the WBG and other partners.JICA and the WBG hold ongoing, regular consultations on development issues in South Asia and East Asia and the Pacific region.

Open discussion with JICA staff

Other senior executives participating from the WBG were Keiko Honda, MIGA Executive Vice President & CEO; Cyril Muller, Vice President for External and Corporate Relations; Makhtar Diop, Vice President for Africa Region; Axel van Trotsenburg , Vice President for East Asia and Pacific Region; and Karin Finkelston IFC Vice President for Asia Pacific. From JICA, other participants were Vice President Kiyoshi Kodera, Vice President Hiroshi Kato, and Vice President Shigeru Kiyama.

Two WBG Senior Directors, Tim Evans and Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, also joined the discussion. They are responsible for health and disaster risk management under the WBG’s newly-launched Global Practice structure (3) from July 1. The reforms at the WBG is aimed to make the institution better suited to achieve its twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity.

Following after the dialogue, WBG President Kim, together with JICA President Tanaka, had an open discussion with over 100 JICA staff and stressed the mutually shared aspirations between the two institutions.

The two leaders also took this opportunity to sign the IDA 17 Loan Agreement. Disaster Risk Management/Disaster Prevention and Climate Change is one of the four special themes in IDA17, and many IDA countries are in South Asia and Africa.

The two institutions plan to enhance the partnership through these types of high level dialogues on a regular basis.

Notes:

1: The World Bank Group comprises five institutions; the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
2: The goal of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is to ensure that “all people obtain the health services they need without suffering financial hardship when paying for them.”
3: Global Practice was launched for the purpose of generating, sharing, and deploying, smoothly within the institution, global knowledge and expertise of the World Bank Group. The fourteen Global Practices (GP) and five Cross-Cutting Solution Areas (CCSAs) have been established.