Japanese PM announces Africa development forum

The Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who's touring three African nations, has announced that Japan will hold an African development summit in Tokyo this year.

Speaking at a luncheon in Johannesburg hosted by the South African President Thabo Mbeki, he said Japan would create a forum where Africans could discuss and initiate their own development strategies, rather than take ownership of projects devised for Africa by specialists in the developed nations.

Mr Mori said Africa held the key to the future of humanity, and that without solutions to its problems, there could be no stability in the twenty-first century.

Mr Mori, who's the first serving Japanese prime minister to visit sub-Saharan Africa, will go on from South Africa to Kenya and then Nigeria.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service