Nobuhide Minorikawa

Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Japan

Date of Birth: 1964

Nobuhide Minorikawa plays a leading role in the development of Japan's African diplomacy. With wide experience of development economics and diplomacy, he is a familiar face on the African conference circuit.

In Tokyo, Minorikawa has served on various parliamentary committees and was appointed Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs in August 2008. He attended the Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Ghana in September 2008 and led the Joint Mission for Promoting Trade and Investment to East Africa to Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania. He visited Rwanda in December 2008 to offer help in resolving the crisis in eastern Congo-Kinshasa and accompanied Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone to Botswana in March 2009 for a follow-up meeting after last May's Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development.

Born in Omagari, Akita Province, in 1964, Minorikawa studied politics at Keio University and earned a master's at Columbia University's School of Public Policy and International Relations in New York. After a brief stint at Akita Bank in the late 1980s, he became private secretary to his father, Hidefumi Minorikawa, a four-term Liberal Democratic Party representative. After his father's death in 2003, Nobuhide ran as an independent in his father's constituency. He won a second term in 2005, this time on the LDP ticket.