President Paul Wolfowitz, on his first visit to Japan as president, held an interactive dialogue with staff from 4 East Asia country offices and guests on October 12 before leaving for China, the next leg of his 2 week trip. Speaking from the Tokyo Development Learning Center, Mr.Wolfowitz connected to Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta and Hanoi via the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) and was observed widely by 9 World Bank offices and GDLN distance learning centers in the East Asia Pacific and South Asia regions.
President Wolfowitz met with JICA President Sadako Ogata on October 12, 2005, to discuss areas where the Bank could collaborate with JICA. Africa was high on the agenda, as Mr. Wolfowitz has given the region priority and JICA is taking the initiative on Asia-Africa Knowledge Creation. The two leaders talked about promoting collaborative activities between the TDLC/GDLN and JICA-Net/JICA.
“There’s no question that one of the most valuable tools for development is giving people information about things that work, and don’t work. Hopefully we can do more with this technology than we’ve been able to do in the past,” said World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz after touring the Tokyo Development Learning Center on October 11, 2005. Mr. Wolfowitz is visiting Japan for the first time as president, his first stop on a two week tour of Asia and Europe.
