Asia SEED is the successor to the Japan-Indonesia Science and Technology Forum (JIF); it has been devoted to science and technology exchanges between Japan and Indonesia and active since 1984.

JIF was founded as an executive office of a non-profit forum. Its Steering Committee, consisting of prominent figures from both Japan and Indonesia, had its annual meetings in either Tokyo or Jakarta alternately and discussed various issues of interest. To date, JIF has contributed to the exchange of experts in a wide range of fields from science to culture and education, among other fields. Above all, JIF has been highly evaluated for its outstanding services in supporting a large number of Indonesian students who study at Japanese universities under the Indonesian government’s auspices.

Later, however, JIF’s activities to help foster human resources of developing countries, typically by supporting their students while studying in Japan, became no longer confined to Indonesia, but expanded to Malaysia, Thailand and then Southeast Asia region-wide. Qualitative changes were noted as well. Today, JIF gets involved more universal projects that foster competent human resources. Good examples are the preparatory education and twining program, both given locally in order to enrich the value of university education. JIF also offers in developing countries various projects to upgrade human and physical resources at universities and research institutes. In short, JIF is activities have outgrown the initial scope specified upon its foundation.

For these reasons, Asia SEED was created to take over from JIF its human resources development projects, and then to broaden the projects to cover Asia regionwide. On November 5, 1999, the newly created Asia SEED that was an organization of since and Education for Economic Development in Asia was certified as a registered non-profit organization by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government under the Law for the Promotion of Non-Profit Organization (NPO Act).