CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONSDECLARATION ON THE 6TH TOKYOINTERNATIONAL CONFEENCE ON
AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT(TICAD VI)‘People’s Voices to the 2016 TICAD VI’

BANJUL, THE GAMBIA
14TH JUNE 2016

Civic Commission of Africa

Civic Commission of Africa

PREAMBLE
WE, the Civil Society following the TICAD process under the auspices of the Civic Commission
for Africa and the Japanese Citizens Network for TICAD held consultations with various nonstate actors across Africa and Japan including Nairobi from 9 th – 10th June, 2016, Banjul from13th – 14th June, 2016 and Tokyo from 8th – 9th June, 2016
ACKNOWLEDGING the importance of TICAD as a multilateral partnership that seeks to further
Africa’s development
RECOGNIZING the efforts and contributions to accelerate economic and social development
through partnership between the governments of Africa and JapanREALIZING the imperative of a sustained and coordinated approach and ownership of theNon-State Actors especially civil society organizations to engage and ensure effective
implementation and monitoring of TICAD VINOTING the importance and prominent role that Non- State Actors especially civil society
always and historically play, the critical role of creating linkages, mobilizing citizen
participation and community voices, providing resources and services hence shaping
Africa’s development from the local, national, regional and at global levels,
RECOGNIZING that TICAD VI should be an inclusive process where development should be
people centered, people driven and unleashes the full potential of African Women, Persons
with Disabilities, Youth and other CSO’s who play a key role in ensuring accountability anderadication of poverty, leaving no one behind in Africa within the context of Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs),
APPRECIATING the Kenyan Government for their support towards the engagement of NonState Actors in the TICAD process and also acknowledging their important role in the Process.
We further appreciate the Japan Government for the third replenishment to the global fund
CONCERNED that though the TICAD process is meant to be a consultative process, civilsociety is not facilitated to play their critical role as a partner in planning, implementation andmonitoring commitments at country level through accessing of resources and capacity
development,
FURTHER CONCERNED that lack of commitment by developed countries to reach the 0.7%
ODA target and noting that the current financing for development relies on private sector
and domestic resources of the developing countries and as a result insufficient investment forpoverty eradication in African countries,FURTHER NOTING the role given to Non -State actors during the Senior Official Meeting (SOM)
in Djibouti, we call for the recognition, provision of resources and institutionalization of nonstate actors as an integral part within the TICAD VI process
URGE TICAD to play a central role in harnessing demographic dividend that would result frominvesting in African young people, recognizing their role in development and placing their
aspirations at the centre of development.
URGE TICAD to promote full and active engagement of diverse civil society and non-state
actors, to develop policies of TICAD, implementation of projects and programs under TICAD,
and follow-up and review the progress of TICAD action plans.
COMMIT to promote sensitization and monitor the implementation of the TICAD VI process atcommunity, national, Sub-regional and regional levels

WE THEREFORE RECOMMEND THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS;
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Civic Commission of Africa

PILLAR 1: INDUSTRIALIZATION
TICAD VI should work within the framework of the African Union Industrialization Policy and theRegional Economic Communities (REC’s) initiatives on innovation, intellectual property rights andlow carbon development pathway. This should be geared towards ensuring that land tenure
policies do not disenfranchise local communities in the journey of industrialization, channeling theright investments to support value addition and create and enhance industries.
The African Governments should ensure the creation of an all-inclusive infrastructure development
framework that ensures Africa’s private sector and African Civil Society organisations are involved
during project conceptualisation, implementation and monitoring stages for purposes of skills
transfer and ownership.
TICAD VI should ensure an Africa-driven well thought out strategy on technology transfer thataddresses Africa’s development needs targeting especially the youth, women and othervulnerable groups at community level. And TICAD VI should come up with a formalised structure toengage both Africa and Japanese Civil Society, ensuring that it is capacitated through funding of
1% of the total Nairobi Declaration Budget.
PILLAR 2: HEALTH
Recognising that universal access to comprehensive healthcare as basic human rights is critical inensuring well-being of individuals to create impact on socio-economic development of Africannations. We call on African Governments to increase domestic resource mobilisation starting with
the implementation of the Abuja Declaration among other declarations which require 15% of thenational budgets to health for sustainability of health outcomes. African and Japan Governments
should take advantage of the TICAD process to develop equitable health and community systems
to end HIV, TB and malaria by 2030, according to UNAIDS and WHO.
The Japanese government should ensure that its commitment to the Global Fund for HIV, TB andMalaria (GFATM) and other health related institutions are fully met. We urge Japanese
government to expand its investment in Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in Africa and provide
technical assistance to develop financial mechanism to ensure realisation of UHC at nationallevel.
TICAD VI should scale up the capacity of African countries to collect gender and age
disaggregated data, research on communicable and non-communicable diseases, skills andtechnology transfer, ensure appropriate Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Systems (TRIPS)
flexibilities for the improvement of community and health systems. TICAD should facilitate civilsociety to play accountability role in strengthening the implementation of existing policies andprogrammes
PILLAR 3: WATER & SANITATION
Access to safe and clean water is a paramount human right. TICAD should support Non-State
actors’ efforts in building infrastructure, use of technology to identify and facilitate access to safe
and clean water, public education and awareness on water management, mapping ofwater resources and advocacy on existing climate change and environmental policies.
We urge the Japanese government to support programmes and policies that are aimed atensuring universal access to safe water and sanitation especially primary healthcare facilities andeducational institutions in rural and urban areas.
PILLAR 4: CLIMATE CHANGE
The growing impacts of climate change continues to pose considerable risks to Africa’s
development agenda and eroding the meagre development gains made over several decades.
Unless urgent local action is taken and international support especially from developed countries

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Civic Commission of Africa
like Japan received, Africa’s ability to achieve the SDGs and meeting its commitment in the ParisAgreement will be greatly hampered. The Paris Climate Change Agreement adopted by 195
countries in December 2015 in Paris presents an opportunity for African countries to partner withJapan under TICAD process especially in the implementation of the Nationally Determined
Contributions (NDC’s), National Climate Change Response policies, strategies, plans andProgrammes in ensuring Adaptation and Mitigation initiatives are jointly implemented towards atransition to low-emissions and climate resilient development in the context of the Agenda 2030
and Africa’s Agenda 2063.
TICAD VI should play a catalytic role laying a foundation for the provision of Means ofImplementation for the Paris Agreement for Africa. These include climate finance, capacity
building and technology development and transfer targeting local communities which are highly
vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
TICAD should collaborate with other development partners and civil society organizations toenhance climate financing through the provided mechanisms under the UNFCCC including theGreen Climate Fund, Global Environment Facility (GEF) among others. As the African civil society
we see the Paris Agreement is a key milestone in addressing climate change BUT unless there isserious commitment especially from developed countries the agreement will be a failure;
therefore the TICAD process should show government’s commitment and good will in theimplementation of the Paris Agreement domestically and through international solidarity andsupport especially to developing countries in Africa.
The shift to low carbon development pathway especially in the energy and agricultural sector
should not lead to illegal land grabbing and displacement of African communities in the name ofaddressing climate change. TICAD VI should ensure the shift does not negatively deprive therights of local communities with regard to land ownership and lead to unlawful displacements ofpeople.
PILLAR 5: WOMEN, YOUTH AND OTHER VULNERABLE GROUPS
Women and Youth form more than half of Africa’s population. We therefore recommend that
TICAD VI should; invest in agro business initiatives to make agriculture attractive to women andyouths in order to attain food security; promote innovations and technology transfer andsafeguard, patent intellectual rights of African indigenous knowledge and technology that
support youth and women entrepreneurship; Promote access to social services including
education and health for youth, women, persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups;
Strengthen the economic empowerment of women. youth and persons with disabilities and theprovision of capital to enable them venture into business and create market opportunities; Support
effective systems, structures and institutional arrangements to improve the social and economic
status of women, youth and persons with disabilities.
PILLAR 6: SOCIAL SECURITY AND TERRORISM
Social Security is a key catalyst for human prosperity and for creating an enabling environmentthat attracts foreign direct investments. TICAD VI should support the fight against marginalization,exclusion, and youth unemployment as key causes of youth radicalization. Civil society can play akey role in combatting violent extremism and therefore TICAD VI should invest in civil society in theimplementation of key programmes including; African peer review mechanism on corruption andgovernance, educational reforms especially civic education; awareness raising and sensitization;
promoting sports music, art and culture for the youth; Peace building programmes; strengthening
local actors including media and encourage citizen’s initiatives for counter-extremism; promoting
dialogue among the state and non-state actors on pertinent security issues; promoting
democracy and good governance. The TICAD process should strongly condemn externalinterference by developed countries in fragile states in the form of weapon trade and naturalresource looting. To foster Africa’s full potential of social, political and economic growth.
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