Week of Africa: A day with Jeffrey Sachs, Bono and Tony Blair.

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The public relations of "Table For Two" activity which I am also involved was held in Diet Member’s office welcoming Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.

It is a wonderful thing that social entrepreneurial activity like this originated in Japan and is spreading to the world into a movement that works on problems of scarcity of food on one side of the world and overeating on the other.  I encourage you to participate.

I went to Keio University in the afternoon.  Various events are being held on its 150th anniversary this year.  There was a presentation of a degree of "Doctor of Law" to Mr. Bono of Rock band U2 (Photograph 1 to 3) followed by commemorative speech.  The award presentation ceremony was held at the auditorium, a prestigious place for Keio University, which was built by the initiative of Yukichi Fukuzawa, the founder of Keio.  I was invited to this ceremony by Mr. Bono.  Ever since our meeting in the Davos Forum this year I am helping him along with Dr. Sadako Ogata and others.

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Photo1 Mr. Bono, at the presentation of ‘Doctor of Law’, and Dr. Anzai, the President of Keio University.

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Photo2 With Mr. Bono.

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Photo3 Jeffrey Sachs also participated.

The speech was a series of lectures on Shibusawa Ei’ichi memorial lectureship of Keio University that promotes the movements of "Civil Society."

Then, I went to a meeting with the staffs of Mr. Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of UK, whom I have reported to you in my past column.

These are all related to Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) that will start in Yokohama this week and Toyako G8 Summit in July (Reference 1 TICAD, 2 Toyako Summit). Attention and expectations for Japan are very high.