Africa Kaizen Annual Conference (AKAC) 2023 and Africa Kaizen Award (AKA) 2023 has some unique characteristics compared to those held in the last seven years. Firstly, it is a turning point whereby AKI reports its notable achievement, an increasing number of African countries participated in Africa Kaizen Initiative Action Plan (AKI-AP), and a check point to increasing African side ownership. Secondly, it is intended to briefly explore AKI’s journey to fulfill its objectives and set future direction. Thirdly, it is to elaborate a little bit on selected, timely and specific issues necessitating establishing common understanding, drawing joint recommendations and foreseeing actionable way forward.

At the sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD VI) held in Nairobi (Kenya) in 2016, Kaizen received significant attention as a promising method for raising quality and productivity on the average 30% of productivity improvement is reported by the late Prime Minster Shinzo Abe on TICAD VI. Cognizant of such notable achievements, JICA and AUDA-NEPAD concluded Africa Kaizen Initiative (AKI) in 2017 with the objective to further strengthen those ongoing Kaizen activities in different countries; establishing/strengthening Center of Excellences and through them expanding Kaizen into the rest of the countries in the continent. In general, Kaizen has been remained as one of Japanese ODA pillars for Africa. Side events are organized associated with TICAD events to share the achievements, benefits, challenges, and share research results on Africa Kaizen studied by Japanese and African Academician and practitioners. In addition, at TICAD8 held in Tunisia, how to accelerate the promotion of Kaizen in Africa is also discussed which shows the significant attention it has earned.

Two years elapsed since AKI-AP 2021-2025 is prepared and executed. Countries, both Kaizen-implementing and Pan African Productivity Association (PAPA) members joined this action plan and used as a reference to prepare their annual activity plans in each year in the context of their respective countries. We have now experienced in collective planning and collective performance reviewing as a continent. It is worth noting to briefly review the processes we have gone through thus far. To collect AKIAP 2021 and 2022 performances from each country a Datasheet is prepared and circulated to 13 countries. 15 institutions (Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Mauritius, Namibia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe) submitted the Datasheet for two consecutive years. The following table summarizes 2021 and 2022 performances and 2023 plan of those 13

countries.