1) Programs for accepting trainees

Accepting trainees from developing countries is one of the most basic types of technical cooperation.

Promising trainees destined to play important roles in developing countries' nation-building efforts are invited to Japan or to certain other developing countries for training. This training gives them specialized knowledge and technology in a wide variety of fields, ranging from public administration to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining, manufacturing, energy, health and medical care, transportation, and telecommunications. In recent years, training has also covered such areas as the transition to a market economy and the establishment of juridical institutions.

Third-country training programs are carried out in relatively developed developing countries where the technology that was transferred via Japanese technical cooperation has taken root and where, through Japanese financial assistance and further technical cooperation, recipients can pass on what they have learned to trainees from neighboring countries. This arrangement has the advantage that training can be more closely tailored to realities in developing countries and that different levels of familiarity with technology, language barriers, and customs can be taken better into account.

In-country training programs began in FY1993. These programs help people from developing countries who received training in Japanese technical cooperation programs to transmit their technology and knowledge to a wider circle of officials and engineers from their own country.

2) Youth invitation program (Friendship Program for the 21st Century)

In 1984, the Youth Invitation Program began with an aim of inviting developing countries' junior leaders in their country's nation-building efforts to visit Japan for one month, during which they receive training in their specialty and homestay in different parts of Japan; through these broad-based contacts with Japanese connected with the program, these young people deepen their understanding of Japan and forge friendships with the Japanese people. Participants, both men and women, range in age from 18 to 35; they are picked by recommendation of their government, and belong to different professional categories, including public officials, educators, farmers, urban workers, and other groups.

3) Expert dispatch program

Japan's program for dispatching experts to developing countries, where they carry out technical cooperation in a variety of fields as technical advisers mainly in government organizations, is one of the few most basic types of technical cooperation, together with the trainee acceptance program.

These experts provide guidance in an extremely wide range of fields from technical advice on agriculture, mining and manufacturing, transportation, electricity and communications to advice on improving legal systems and formulating countermeasures for environmental problems and policies for countries in transition to market economies in recent years.

4) Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) and Senior Volunteer Program

The Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer (JOCV) assignment program recruits young people, between the ages of 20 and 39, and trains and sends them to developing countries to live with local people and transfer their technology through aid at the grassroots level. These activities are carried out based on specific agreements between the governments of Japan and the recipient country regarding the assignments of overseas cooperation volunteers. The work of these volunteers differs characteristically from other forms of technical cooperation in that it is voluntary and that participants are recruited from among the general public.
In FY1990 Japan launched the Senior Volunteer Program. These volunteers, whose ages range from 40 to 69, are recruited widely in Japan from those willing to participate and cooperate voluntarily in development projects in developing countries.

5) Project-type technical cooperation

Technical cooperation that is implemented on a planned basis over a period of several years (usually five) and as a combination in one project of the three basic types of technical cooperation-namely trainees, dispatch of experts, and provision of equipment and machinery-is called project-type technical cooperation. In recent years, there have been many cases of linkage of this type with grant aid, in which Japanese grant aid is used to fund the construction of facilities that are then used as the base for carrying out project-type technical cooperation. Project-type technical cooperation is presently being carried out in cooperation projects directed at social development (e.g., road and transportation, telecommunications, education), health and medical care, population control and family planning, agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, and industrial development.

6) Development studies

Development studies often gather information for official development planning centering on the building of roads, ports, electric power systems, telecommunications, sewerage and water supply, agricultural development, and other economic and social infrastructure. At other times, development studies compile the basic data needed as the basis for such planning; the resulting reports are submitted to developing countries' governments, which also use them in social and economic development. Development study reports provide important guidelines in the drafting of development policy by developing country governments, which also use them effectively as sources of basic data in requests for financial and technical assistance to implement development plans.

In recent years, a new type of development study has been carried out whose purpose is to offer policy recommendations and other institutional assistance for medium- and long-term economic development planning, promotion of the transition to market economics, and human resource development. The actual performance of these studies is assigned to teams composed of engineers from consulting companies sent by JICA.

7) Development cooperation projects

Development cooperation projects operated by JICA consist of development-related fiscal investment and lending; i.e., soft loans from JICA on favorable terms (long-term, low-interest) for projects being carried out by Japanese or other companies in developing countries or regions where either a pioneering trial project is being undertaken whose success is highly questionable unless technology is improved or developed at the same time as the project; or where a project for the improvement of related facilities that are a necessary incidental part of a development project and that are of a highly public nature that would help to improve the welfare and to raise the living standards of people in surrounding communities. Where necessary, they also involve technical cooperation: conduct of studies, dispatch of experts in the technologies needed, and accepting trainees from developing countries.