Interview with Research Fellow Seifudein Adem: An Unexpected Journey From Ethiopia to Japan

Seifudein Adem was appointed as a research fellow at the JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development in May 2024. We asked him about his research aspirations, drawing on Japan’s development experience and his perspective on the potential for a development partnership between Japan and Africa.

—You are from Ethiopia, but you obtained your master’s and doctorate degrees in Japan. What motivated you to study in Japan?

My journey from Ethiopia to Japan began in 1991—purely by coincidence. As an assistant lecturer at Addis Ababa University, I attended a conference in the Middle East. On my return flight, the attendant handed me the latest issue of a British weekly magazine, The Economist, which contained a call for applications from the International University of Japan for graduate studies in Japan. I was immediately intrigued by this opportunity; upon landing, I wasted no time in submitting my application. To my delight, I was accepted and started my studies for the Master’s degree in International Relations in 1992. After completing the program, I proceeded to the University of Tsukuba to pursue my doctoral studies in International Political Economy.

Usually, people choose to study in another country either because they are already very familiar with it or because they know very little about it. In my case, it was the latter. I was drawn to studying in Japan because, apart from a few basic facts I had learned in high school and during my undergraduate years—like the fact that Japan and Ethiopia have long histories as countries and that neither country was ever colonized—I knew very little about Japan. Another factor that sparked my curiosity was that Japan was the first non-Western nation to modernize successfully, contradicting the prevailing Western notion that modernization requires Westernization. When I first arrived in the remote snowy countryside of rural Niigata, where the International University of Japan is located, I found everything so different from Ethiopia that I felt as if I had arrived on another planet. However, I kept an open mind and explored what Japan had to offer, and by the time I finished my PhD in 1999, my research focus had begun to narrow on Japan’s economic development. More than 30 years have passed since I first set foot in Japan, and in these years, my curiosity about it has only grown—I’m still studying, and learning, about Japan every day.

—What research have you conducted so far?

My research encompasses five key areas: Japan–Africa relations, insights into Africa in relation to Japan’s developmental experience, China–Africa relations, the scholarship of Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui, and the study of international relations.

I began writing about Japan–Africa relations in 2005, the same year my edited volume, Japan: A Model and a Partner, was released by Brill in the Netherlands. It was significant—especially in retrospect—that only six years after earning my PhD and four years after starting my teaching career at the University of Tsukuba, I could initiate an independent book project, invite contributors, and publish it with a prestigious European publisher.

My research on China–Africa relations is even more far-reaching. A notable publication in this area is a book I edited in 2013, China’s Diplomacy in Eastern Africa (Routledge). What distinguished this book from the other publications on the topic at the time was its perspective and focus on Eastern Africa; it features contributions from scholars primarily located in Eastern Africa, including Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Madagascar.

These two books address the foreign policies and diplomatic approaches of Japan and China toward Africa. However, in my latest book published in 2023, I sought to synthesize my previous works on these subjects and explore the significance of East Asia’s developmental experience for Africa, drawing on the lessons from Japan and China in particular. This book is titled Africa’s Quest for Modernity: Lessons from Japan and China (Springer).

—After teaching at Binghamton University in the United States and at Doshisha University in Japan, you joined the JICA Ogata Research Institute to launch a new research project titled “Journeys for Human Security in Africa.” What is the significance of this project?

First, let me tell you why I am interested in working at a research institute named after the late Dr. Ogata Sadako, the former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. As Dr. Ogata had dedicated an important part of her professional life to improving the lives of refugees, her name epitomized for me the act of human kindness at its best. In addition, the late Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui, with whom I had worked for about a decade at Binghamton University in New York, knew Dr. Ogata and had great respect for her.

There are more studies about African migrants in (and to) Europe and North America than about migration issues within Africa itself. And this, we thought, was a significant gap, because Africans tend to migrate to other African countries more often than to destinations in other continents. One of the primary objectives of this project was therefore to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of African migrants in Africa.

A unique aspect of this project is its emphasis on the perspectives of the African migrants themselves. The project covers all stages of the migratory process, from pre-departure to the potential for return. It looks at how the human security of migrants is challenged throughout their arduous journeys. I think this approach will give us deeper insight into the phenomenon of intra-African migration.

Our contributors comprise Japanese and African scholars and experts, fostering a diverse and rich dialogue. The research findings are expected to have significant policy implications, as they will provide a nuanced understanding of the migration experience. We will utilize semi-structured interviews to capture personal narratives of African migrants at different stages of the migratory process. Our goal is to clarify the complexities of migration and inform policies in order to better support and protect African migrants.

—Are there any other topics you are interested in pursuing?

Among other things, I am exploring the possibility of conducting a comparative study of the ideas of the Japanese thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi and the Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui. Fukuzawa (1835–1901) was one of modern Japan’s first statesmen. He was also an intellectual who introduced Western education, institutions, and social thought to Japan. Mazrui (1933–2014) was an academician, professor, and political writer on Africa and the Islamic world as well as on North–South relations. He is best known for a TV documentary titled, “The Africans: A Triple Heritage,” which explores how African societies have been shaped by Western, Islamic, and Indigenous influences.

Here is how my interest in the subject originated and solidified. The year was 2018. I was working on a paper titled “Reason and Number: African Reflections on Japan,” as an Africa’s Asian Options research fellow at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany; I was attempting to apply the experience of Meiji Japan (1868–1912) to postcolonial Africa from an African perspective. In my view, the challenges Japan encountered in the 19th century are in some ways similar to those encountered by postcolonial Africa. The paper was included in a book published later, Reconfiguring Transregionalization in the Global South (Springer, 2020). While preparing that paper, I came across and familiarized myself with Fukuzawa’s ideas on what we would call today modernization. I had also used Mazrui’s ideas extensively in examining the African condition. However, I had never linked Fukuzawa to Mazrui in my analysis before.

The idea of comparing Fukuzawa and Mazrui occurred to me when one of my younger colleagues asked me recently a deceptively simple question, “Who would be the African figure most comparable to Fukuzawa?” I didn’t expect such a question and couldn’t provide an answer right away, but on further reflection, I realized that some of Mazrui’s ideas were strikingly similar to those of Fukuzawa, despite their separation in space and time. Ali Mazrui was not familiar with Fukazawa’s works.

Fukuzawa witnessed the birth of modern Japan in the late 19th century. Meanwhile, Mazrui saw the emergence of postcolonial Africa after the mid-20th century. Both lived at a time when their respective societies in Japan and Africa were undergoing major transformations and directly observed firsthand the systemic changes that were taking place in their respective societies; they also influenced this very change to different degrees. Fukuzawa was 33 years old during the Meiji Restoration (1968), a coup d’état, or a kind of a revolution from the above, that resulted in the dissolution of Japan’s feudal system of government. Mazrui, too, was in his thirties in the 1960s, the decade of Africa’s decolonization, and both grappled with the question of how Japan and Africa, respectively, could change for the better through social transformation. What struck me most was Fukuzawa’s and Mazrui’s conceptualization of the challenges of modernization and their thoughts about how these challenges could be overcome. In my judgement their ideas are comparable. This is what I want to look at more systematically in the future.

A comparative analysis of Africa and Japan provides three key insights into the challenges of modernization. First, the problems societies face are limited in the sense that they boil down to the issue of how to improve the human condition, or we might say, how to ensure human security. Second, the range of solutions is also finite, although it is influenced by the society’s unique beliefs and worldviews. Third, every culture has the potential solutions for addressing the challenges of modernization in its own way. In other words, the potential for overcoming the challenges of modernization is universal but the approach for doing so is not. Africa, with its “triple heritage” — comprising Islam, indigenous values and western culture — is no exception to these generalizations.

—Do you think that the Japanese model of modernization could be applied to Africa?

I don’t think it can be applied directly. The development experiences of Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam could be relevant for more direct application in areas such as poverty reduction and overall economic growth. Nonetheless, Japan’s development experience and knowledge, including what and how to learn and how to learn fast, could be relevant to Africa for the purpose of stimulation. This means Japan’s support for Africa does not have to be primarily capital transfer; rather, it may be in the form of ideas, knowledge, and experience. Some examples of this include Japan’s model of industrialization and the kaizen approach.

There is another area where Africa could learn from contemporary Japan—peace—a value that Africa truly needs. There are a number of conflicts in Africa today; many of them are because of what is called the crisis of legitimacy. Certain groups do not believe that other groups can rule them—partly because of colonialism, where people who were not culturally linked with one another were brought together under the umbrella of one (nation) state. This became the source of ethnic conflicts. For this reason, politics in much of Africa is still a zero-sum game, that is, you either win or lose; There is often no win–win situation. One of the lessons Africa could learn from Japan’s contemporary politics is, therefore, about the peaceful transition of political power. Thank you.