This article explains how Japan’s economic engagement with Uzbekistan has changed from a relationship centred primarily on official development assistance (ODA) to one in which public finance, export-credit support, and private corporate equity can be combined within a single project structure. The central puzzle is not whether Japanese engagement has increased, but why decades of development cooperation did not automatically produce comparable commercial investment and under what conditions this relationship can change. The article develops the concept of “aid conversion”, defined as the institutional translation of development cooperation into commercially structured investment involving private capital from the donor country. It uses a qualitative single-case study, process tracing, and documentary analysis of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) loan agreements, Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) project-finance documentation, corporate disclosures, and official bilateral statements. The evidence supports a three-stage periodisation: a grant-and-technical-cooperation model (1993-2007), an infrastructure-lending model with limited commercial follow-through (2008-2016), and an emerging risk-sharing model (2017-2026). The analysis argues that donor priorities help explain the timing and sectoral direction of the transition, but they are insufficient on their own. Commercial conversion also requires recipient-side institutions that make projects financeable, including credible long-term offtake arrangements, predictable rules, and a workable allocation of risk. The 2025 solar-and-storage financing arrangements illustrate this emerging model, while the continued use of concessional lending shows that the transition is incomplete. The article contributes a transaction-centred framework for analysing Japan’s engagement in Central Asia and offers policy implications for Uzbekistan’s external economic strategy.
From Development Assistance to Risk-Sharing: Explaining the Changing Structure of Japan-Uzbekistan Economic Relations
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