In many contemporary accounts of Western aid and capacity-building in Africa, there would not be a close connection between aid and trade. The deliberate links between aid and trade provision, once very common, were broken in the UK, for example, with the 1997 White Paper on Development (DFID, 1997). By contrast, in Japan, there still seems to be an expectation that there be a close connection between official development assistance (ODA) and trade. In the 2003 ODA Charter, for instance, it is stated clearly that:

In the revised version of the ODA Charter, which is significantly entitled Enhancing Enlightened National Interest (Japan 2010a), there is a great deal mentioned about cooperation with the private sector, including ‘Facilitating participation by Japanese local companies and small-scale enterprises (SMEs) in ODA projects’ (Japan, 2010: 15); indeed the term ‘private’ is used 24 times in just 21 pages.

What of China? Where does enterprise figure in its own public statements about overseas aid? In the government's own first, historical account of its ‘foreign aid’ (China, 2011a), it is clear in just a few paragraphs that a key part of its reform of aid was the inclusion of the private sector.