Egypt: President Al-Sissi, Japanese PM to meet during 7th TICAD Summit

Cairo, Egypt (PANA) - The Egyptian president and current chairman of the African Union, Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, will Wednesday meet with the Japanese Prime minister, Shinzo Abe, on the sidelines of the 7th Tokyo International Conference on Africa's Development, the spokesperson for the Egyptian presidency, Bessam Ridha, said on Tuesday. In addition to the Egyptian president, dozens of African leaders will take part in the summit to be held from 28 to 30 August and which is co-organized with the United Nations, the World Bank (WB) and the African Union since 1993. The Egyptian president and the Japanese Prime Minister will hold talks on the bilateral cooperation concerning several domains including the big projects being executed presently by Japan. Among the projects are particularly roads, metros, energy, the Japanese University in Egypt and the big Egyptian museum, said Mr Ridha. The two leaders should on Wednesday co-chair the opening of the 7th TICAD which focuses on the theme strengthening African development through peoples, technologies and innovation. Participants will insist on three key issues linked to economic changes, the improvement of the business environment through the promotion of private investments and innovation and finally the strengthening of security, stability and peace of societies. The first four TICAD Summits were held in Japan from 1993 to 2008 at the rate of one summit every five years before the reduction of the duration of the interval between two conferences after the 2013 summit held in Yokohama to take it to one summit every three years. In 2016, during the sixth summit held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, participants decided to hold alternatively the Summit between Japan and Africa. -0- PANA YY/IN/IS/MSA/VAO 27August2019