Few countries in the world offer a more powerful illustration of what productivity can do for a nation than Japan. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Japan did not simply rebuild its economy — it reimagined it, placing productivity at the heart of a national movement anchored in visionary leadership, strong institutions, and a remarkable spirit of collaboration among government, industry, labour and academia. Through philosophies and practices such as Kaizen, quality management and continuous improvement, productivity became the engine of Japan’s rise to global competitiveness and a defining feature of its economic identity.

The JICA Chair Programme gives Mauritius a rare and direct window into this experience. Rather than treating Japan’s story as a historical case study, the programme uses it as a living source of inspiration — a springboard for reflecting on how Mauritius can design and implement its own national productivity agenda, one that is firmly grounded in the country’s economic realities, institutional context and long-term development ambitions.

By convening policymakers, private sector leaders, academics, development partners and other key stakeholders around a shared table, the programme creates the conditions for a genuine national dialogue — one that builds a common understanding of productivity’s role in driving sustainable and inclusive growth, while opening space for frank exchanges on national priorities, sector-specific challenges and opportunities for collaboration. It is, in essence, an invitation for Mauritius to chart its own productivity story.

Drawing on Prof. Izumi Ohno’s decades of experience — including her leadership of industrial policy dialogue — together with her scholarly expertise and the themes emphasised in her published work, the programme will feature lectures on the following:

• framing productivity as a guiding principle of national development — understood not as a technical or managerial concept, but as an organising idea for the quality and competitiveness of a nation’s growth;
• the underlying methodology of industrial policy — distilling from Japan’s and Asia’s experience the ways of thinking and approaches to policymaking, rather than transferable models or success stories;
• the principle of translative adaptation — the conviction that development is realised not by adopting foreign models, but by selectively learning, critically examining, and internalising them within one’s own context;
• dialogue and shared understanding — the public–private cooperation and consensus on which a collective productivity agenda depends, as demonstrated through Prof. Ohno’s practice of policy dialogue;
• ownership and a change of mindset — so that development is driven by a country’s own initiative and self-help efforts rather than externally prescribed solutions;
• the gradual building of capability — development as a dynamic, phased process of learning across firms, sectors, and government; and
• the foundations for homegrown development — the relationships and shared understanding from which a country can shape, institutionalise, and in time share its own path.