based on self-help efforts and reducing poverty, as symbolized in the story known as "The Spirit of the 100 Sacks of Rice" $ ^{*1} $ that Prime Minister Koizumi told at the Genoa Summit in the previous year. It has been a guiding principle for Japan's contribution in the field of basic education. Broad-based policy decision makers and academics both domestically and overseas exchange opinions and make efforts to call attention both domestically and overseas to the necessity for international cooperation supporting self-help efforts.

In the field of basic education, Japan has strengthened support for low-income countries. Support for Africa, in particular, is becoming important. Japan's support is implemented using a combination of various forms of assistance. Concretely, in the five years from TICAD II in 1998 to TICAD III in 2003, Japan implemented grant aid cooperation of approximately 36 billion yen for the purpose of building and developing schools. As a result of this cooperation, the number of children who have attained the opportunity to receive education came to approximately 2.6 million. In Kenya, Ghana and South Africa, Japan has implemented projects for improving mathematics and science education. In Kenya, the Strengthening of Mathematics and Science in Secondary Education (SMASSE) project started in 1988 (see

Hiroko Watanabe, dispatched to UNICEF through a Japanese NGO to work in the Back to School Campaign, with a group of young Afghan schoolgirls

Column II-2 for details), and cooperation has been provided for establishing a system for retraining currently employed secondary school mathematics and science teachers. This Kenyan experience and accomplishments have shared with other African countries, and the Strengthening of Mathematics and Science in Secondary Education-Western, Eastern, Central and Southern Africa (SMASSE-WECSA) network of educators of 18 African countries has been created. Experience and accomplishments achieved through Japan's support are expected to be put to increasingly good use in the future.

In Afghanistan, the education system collapsed during the long years of conflict, and in the 1980s, 89% of people aged 25 or more had not received education and less than 1% had completed elementary education. When the Taliban regime were in power, women were forbidden from studying or working, and in 1999, the primary education rate was 38% for boys whereas it was only 3% for girls. In March 2002, at the start of the new school term in Afghanistan, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) conducted the Back to School Campaign to furnish school supplies and educational materials, repair schools, develop the learning environment and so forth. For this campaign, Japan provided support of 12 million dollars, approximately 65% of its overall costs, in the form of ODA (5 million dollars) and contributions from the Japan Committee for UNICEF (7 million dollars). This campaign had an extremely large impact in Afghanistan: more than 3 million children (of which 30% were girls) enrolled in school and the net enrollment rate increased by 60% (and by 90% for girls) compared to before the campaign.

As for intellectual support for system development of countries working to promote the transition to a market economy and open up to foreign business, examples include the Study on the Economic Development Policy for the Transition toward a Market-Oriented Economy in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which provided policy recommendations in the fields of fiscal and monetary policy, industry and trade pro-

## $ ^{*} $ 1: The Spirit of 100 Sacks of Rice

At the beginning of the Meiji Era, the fief of Nagaoka, which was in extreme poverty, received 100 sacks of rice as relief. However, the Chief Counsellor of Nagaoka, Torasaburo Kobayashi, used the 100 sacks of rice, which would have been used up in a few days if they had been distributed among the warriors and inhabitants of the fief, as funds for building a school, investing them in education to bring about thousands, or tens of thousands, of sacks of rice in the future. As a result, a succession of human resources was subsequently produced from the school. This spirit is called "the spirit of the 100 sacks of rice," and is the philosophy that investment in education is the most important investment for nation-building.