The Project for Human Resource Development Scholarship (JDS), a grant aid program by JICA, began accepting international students to Japan in FY2000 and has accepted a cumulative total of 4,662 foreign students as of the end of FY 2019. JDS Project is the long-term scholarship project that fosters human resources for planning and implementing social and economic development programs in developing countries. The program aims to extend and strengthen the bilateral relations between home country and Japan, with each international student serving as a good understanding of Japan. Initially, the program targeted specific Asian countries, but it has since been expanded to include a wide range of Asian countries and the African region, and as of 2020, students from 19 countries have been accepted. However, there are several scholarship programs that accept students from developing countries, including those from Japan and other donors. As the environment surrounding JDS is changing, JICA needs to be more strategic in its promotion of projects to accept international students.

Under these circumstances, the basic study “Verification of the Effectiveness of JDS Projects” (February 2020) (“Basic Study”) was conducted to quantitatively and qualitatively investigate the overall results of JDS projects and to organize and analyze the project effectiveness and its trends in the target countries. As a result of the Basic Study, the following recommendations were made to strengthen the strategy and add value in the future: “expansion of Japanese language pre-departure training,” “strengthening of networking between international students and Japanese government officials,” “maintenance and development of relationships with Japanese counterparts after returning home,” and “reconsideration of designing the doctoral program”.

Based on the above recommendations, this research project was conducted with the aim of supporting the application of the above recommendations to specific JDS projects. Specifically, the project included: organizing information on all international students and proposing effective use of the data; conducting research and making proposals on alumni association management; data collection and analysis of scholarship programs offered by other donors in Japan and overseas; and supporting the preparation of JDS publicity materials.