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Japan has emerged in recent years as a leading donor country with African countries. At one level, Japan’s renewed assertiveness in providing foreign aid to Africa is on par with the more active approach by other donor countries. It might appear to some that Japan’s motivations to lend capital and technical assistance to African countries are shared by all lending countries. However, I argue that Japan’s Official Development Policy seeks to break away from the Washington Consensus and to demonstrate its particular leadership position in the donor community. Rather than to focus on domestic bureaucratic politics to explain Japanese ODA or on the specific targets of foreign aid, this chapter seeks to identify the basic features of Japanese national identity that explain its aid policy to Africa. Three themes of Japan’s national economic identity will be highlighted. First, an underlying theme in Japanese foreign aid is its history towards economic development both within Japan and towards Asia. Second, one of the more important aspects underlining Japan’s ODA policy is its relationship to the “Asian economic model.” The main characteristics of Japan’s ODA facilitate self-help and partnership through industrialization, production, and trade. Third, Japan has promoted its own ODA model as distinct from other donors. Japan is the only non-Western country with a history of successful industrialization and Japanese officials have at times distanced themselves from the dominant policy prescriptions embedded in the Washington Consensus. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]