The Japanese government struggled this week to convince a public nervous about demographic decline that its “African Hometown” program is not a backdoor scheme to set up mass migration from Africa to Japan.
The controversy began last Thursday, when the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) designated four Japanese cities to participate in the Africa Hometown program with four cities in Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana, and Tanzania.
The Nigerian government immediately announced that Japan would “create a special visa category for highly skilled, innovative, and talented young Nigerians who want to move to Kisarazu to live and work.” Kisarazu is the Japanese city chosen to pair with Nigeria.
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The office of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu claimed the decision to issue these special visas was made at the Ninth Tokyo International Conference on African Development, or TICAD 9, which was held last week in Yokohama, Japan.
The Japanese public erupted in fury at the announcement, their anger further heightened when they discovered Google Maps was suddenly identifying the Kisarazu city office as the “Nigerian city office.”
Residents of the other three Japanese cities involved in the program – Sanjo, Nagai, and Imabari – flooded their own municipal governments with inquiries as news of the Nigerian statement about work visas for Kisarazu spread.
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the left-wing UK Guardian rushed to denounce the Japanese public as “xenophobic” for their “ugly backlash” against migration.
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“We did not ask to accept migrants or ease special working visa requirements for Nigerians,” Kisarazu Mayor Watanabe Yoshikuni declared on Monday.
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The national government in Tokyo quickly got involved, asking African officials and publications to correct “inaccuracies and potentially misleading information.”
The JICA hastened to explain that the “Africa Hometown” program was merely a sort of sister city relationship, primarily involving cultural exchanges and symbolic gestures of goodwill.
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