Abstract: Since Japan held the first Tokyo International Conference on African Development in 1993, especially since the TICAD6 was held in Africa for the first time in 2016, Japan has gradually increased its strategic emphasis on Africa from the perspective of “IndoPacific Strategy”. The sudden outbreak of COVID19 in 2020 interrupted Japans original agenda of cooperation with Africa but provided an important opportunity for Japan to carry out its antipandemic diplomacy with Africa. Since 2021, as a country with great influence in health care and foreign aid in the world, Japan has successively hosted the Global Vaccine Summit and the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit, focusing on the nontraditional challenges which Africa is facing in the area of health, nutrition and COVID19 vaccines. Therefore Japan has continuously increased its ODA and carried out “health diplomacy” to Africa at both bilateral and multilateral levels to achieve its own strategic interests as well as paving the way for the TICAD8 to be held in 2022. From the perspective of nontraditional security, this paper starts with Japans antipandemic diplomacy with Africa by taking the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit and COVID19 vaccines assistance as clues, and focuses on sorting out the main trends in Japans diplomacy of health and vaccines to Africa as well as analyzes its strategic considerations and the development in the future.

Key words: Japan's relations with Africa, Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit, vaccine assistance, Indo-Pacific Strategy, health diplomacy