On 11 December 2025, the EU-Japan Centre successfully organised a hybrid seminar highlighting business opportunities in Africa and the potential for EU-Japan joint projects in Africa.
Thomas Gnocchi (Delegation of the European Union to Japan) opened the event, reaffirming the importance of trilateral cooperation between the EU, Japan and Africa.
Asad Beg (European External Action Service) and Claire Hunault (European Commission) presented the Global Gateway Strategy and the European Fund for Sustainable Development Plus (EFSD+) as tools to finance projects in Africa and mobilise more private-sector engagement. They also highlighted the key takeaways of the EU-Africa Business Forum which took place in November 2025.
Hiromu Kajiwara (Japan External Trade Organization) mentioned the energy and mining sectors as promising sectors in Africa according to Japanese companies. He also highlighted the advantages of complementarity between EU and Japanese companies to conduct successful joint projects in Africa.
Then, Airi Ikedo-Okutani (Index Strategy) introduced the Ghana Road Public-Private Partnership Project between her company (Japan), Maeda Corporation (Japan), Mota-Engil (Portugal) and Strategic Initiatives Limited (Ghana). She underscored how tri-regional governance can improve project bankability and that such successful models could be replicated across the continent.
Ahmed Sami Abo Arab (Hitachi Energy) presented two Gulf-of-Suez wind farm projects in Egypt for which his company delivered grid integration solutions to Vestas (Denmark) and the Red Sea Wind Energy consortium (France/Japan). Financing from Japan, the EU, France and Germany were used in these projects.
Modest Kwapinski (EDF, France) introduced the Taza wind farm project in Morocco in partnership with Mitsui & Co., Ltd. (Japan), which has a positive impact locally in terms of job creation, access to clean electricity and social actions.
Then, three banks presented financing instruments available to the private sector for projects in Africa. In addition, Antonin Calzarossa (European Investment Bank) also introduced priority sectors such as energy, climate mitigation, health, critical raw materials, agribusiness, transport and digital solutions. Kohei Toyoda (Japan Bank for International Cooperation) presented projects and instruments related to green hydrogen and ammonia. Naoshige Kinoshita (Asia External Representation Office, African Development Bank) explained the eligibility criteria for companies interested in non-sovereign operations (NSO) to finance projects in Africa.
Finally, the closing remarks were delivered by Manuel Hubert (EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation) and the event concluded with a lively and productive networking reception, offering participants a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas and explore future avenues for cooperation.
A video recording of the event is available here.
About the event.
Published: March 2026