Appointment of the Representative of the Government of Japan to the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

August 1, 2008

At the cabinet meeting on August 1, the Government of Japan decided to appoint Mr. Ryoichi Matsuyama, Japanese Ambassador to Botswana, to be concurrently the first representative of the Government of Japan to the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The SADC is regional organization with 14 member states of southern Africa, established in August 1992 to promote intraregional economic growth, eliminate poverty, and strengthen coordination; its headquarters is in Gaborone, Botswana. The SADC holds a variety of activities such as annual summit meetings, committee meetings and seminar workshops. In recent years, the SADC has been holding special summit meetings to discuss solutions for the increasingly serious situation in Zimbabwe, and its presence and importance in the international arena has been increasing rapidly.
Taking into account this increasing importance of the SADC, Japan sets the closer relationship with the SADC in one of the most important tasks of its diplomacy with Africa. Japan’s appointment of a government representative to the SADC is extremely significant not only in substantial matters smoothing and coordinating with the SADC, but also in its symbolic meaning from the perspective of the relations with the southern Africa.
From such a viewpoint, the Government of Japan has appointed Mr. Matsuyama, Japanese Ambassador to Botswana, as the resident representative to the SADC, and it is expected that the relations between Japan and the SADC, and southern Africa in general, will become even closer with the present appointment.

(END)

Back to Index