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OAKLAND — Mayor Jerry Brown, who has projected an unconventional, even enigmatic, persona during 3 1/2 decades of public life, took a traditional step in his private life Saturday, marrying his longtime companion and manager of his upcoming campaign for state attorney general.

In a formal and quasireligious civil ceremony orchestrated by Brown himself and attended by almost 600 guests, the 67-year-old former governor exchanged rings with former Gap Inc. executive Anne Gust. It was the first marriage for each, and came after 15 years together.

Elements of Brown’s past, present and future converged in the half-hour ceremony packed with much of the Bay Area’s Democratic political establishment. It was held in the rotunda of a renovated, historic Civic Center office building, the sort of project Brown has promoted as a pro-development mayor. The wedding was laced with biblical readings and Gregorian chants in Latin that Brown knew all too well as a former Roman Catholic seminarian.

“I wanted the sound to be traditional,” Brown said afterward. “Most [of it] is 800 years old and nothing is less than 500.”

It was not exactly the sort of wedding people had come to expect from a man who many years ago was dubbed Gov. Moonbeam for living in Spartan fashion, driving a state-issued Plymouth and dating singer Linda Ronstadt. Nor was it the wedding of a man who studied yoga, volunteered for Mother Teresa’s home for the poor people in Calcutta, or more recently lived in lofts in gritty parts of this city.

“This is more than traditional,” former San Francisco mayor and onetime Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said after the wedding. “It would have satisfied anything the Kennedy clan would have put together. It’s California [political] history for 40 years.”

The attendees were like signposts on the political road traveled by the son and namesake of the late Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.

Jerry Brown, who grew up in San Francisco and graduated from UC Berkeley and Yale Law School, served as secretary of state from 1970 to 1974 and governor from 1975 to 1983. He also ran for president and headed the state Democratic Party. He was elected mayor of Oakland in 1999, and is seeking the Democratic nomination for state attorney general in 2006.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a former San Francisco mayor, presided over the wedding in a pink dress. The 47-year-old bride, in an ivory Diane von Furstenberg dress, was presented by her father, Rockwell T. Gust Jr., who once ran for lieutenant governor of Michigan.

Gust, who is a lawyer, and Brown, in a black suit with white shirt and tie, exchanged rings and vows. Then Feinstein declared them husband and wife, and they embraced and kissed to applause as singers performed the final chant.

Brown’s sister, Kathleen, a former state treasurer and candidate for governor, was present. So were many other Democratic politicians, including Oakland’s top city officials, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and former Gov. Gray Davis.

Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, Brown’s designated successor as mayor, was there along with people from the early years of Brown’s career, such as Orville Schelle, dean of the journalism school at UC Berkeley, and PG&E; executive Dan Richard, who served on then Gov. Brown’s staff from 1979 to 1982.

“One person just said we should have buttons saying ‘I’m from the ‘70s,’ … ‘I’m from the ‘80s’ … ‘the ‘90s,’ ” Richard said.

After the civil ceremony in Oakland, another set of nuptials was to be held at the San Francisco church where Brown’s parents were married and he was baptized.

Then Brown said the newlyweds plan to spend a couple of days on the Russian River — then take a belated honeymoon in Italy in August — after the June primary.

“We have a little campaign in the meantime,” he said.

Japan has one combined distinctive goal on the African agenda—investment, trade, and development. This was indicated explicitly in most all speeches and presentations at the three-day development conference, from August 20 to 22, in Japan, attended by African leaders and top-level entrepreneurs, where Tokyo offered a multifaceted agenda as an alternative to other key players competing for spots across the continent, which is described as wealthy in untapped natural resources. Africa’s human resource is huge, while the estimated population of 1.4 billion people constitutes the largest consumer market in the Global South.

In the simple words of UN head Antonio Guterres, Africa has everything it takes to become the latest economic power, as he assertively called for greater investment, especially in the economic sectors across the resource-rich continent. Guterres, in his speech, underlined the fact that Africa needed increased concessional finance and greater lending capacity from multilateral development banks.

“Africa must have a stronger voice in shaping the decisions that affect its own future. We must mobilize finance and technology so that Africa’s natural wealth benefits African people; we must build a thriving renewables and manufacturing base across the continent,” Guterres said at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD).

Over the past decade, the United States’ and Europe’s investments have drastically fallen, while Russia, as a latecomer with tectonic anti-Western criticism, is currently struggling to locate its roadmap into the continent. For years, China has invested heavily in Africa, with many of its companies already there having signed deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars to finance several projects under Beijing’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative.

As expected, African countries grappling with rapid geopolitical changes are at the same time making the right pragmatic choices from among the tremendous emerging opportunities. African leaders are indiscriminately searching for sustainable investment and trade relations, even with the United States after Donald Trump slapped on them trade tariffs. Further to that, many African leaders, including Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Kenyan President William Ruto, are feverishly negotiating for the renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

In his opening address at the forum on August 20, Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced a plan to train 30,000 people in artificial intelligence in Africa over three years and to study the idea of a Japan-Africa Economic Partnership. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba also announced a vision for a distribution network to link African and Indian Ocean nations. Under the Indian Ocean Africa economic zone initiative, Japan aims to bring investment into Africa from Japanese companies operating in India and the Middle East.

The Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) has strengthened business and investment in the region and promoted free trade by connecting the Indian Ocean region to the African continent. “Japan believes in Africa’s future,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said. “Japan backs the concept of the African Continental Free Trade Area,” which aims to bolster the region’s competitiveness.

As part of practical steps toward strengthening economic partnership, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Japan would extend loans of up to $5.5 billion in coordination with the African Development Bank to promote Africa’s sustainable development and to address their debt problems. Amid the current intensifying global competition for influence, Japan’s concrete allocation of funds demonstrated its presence as a long-term reliable partner ready to invest, and more importantly with credibility, across Africa. It is noticeable that Japanese firms are promoting resonating large-scale investment in infrastructure, technology, and industrial development. 

According to the August edition of the Diplomat magazine, Japanese officials have signed major agreements in Angola, Namibia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including a $1 billion commitment to mineral exploration and production. Tokyo plans to expand its network of bilateral investment treaties to provide greater legal certainty for Japanese investors. Ultimately these agreements, combined with Africa’s ongoing efforts to implement the African Continental Free Trade Area, could unlock significant new flows of capital and trade. The magazine’s article indicated that at TICAD 8, held in 2022 in Tokyo, mostly operating through a model of partnered engagement, Tokyo offered Africa an amount of $30 billion in investment under a ‘three-year period’ that ended in 2025.

On the future free-trade deals between Japan and African countries, Japan’s biggest business lobby, Keidanren, noted that Tokyo must work to win the trust of developing countries with loan guarantees and investment incentives for Japanese firms. “By actively contributing to solving the social issues faced by countries in the Global South, Japan must be chosen as a trustworthy partner,” Keidanren said in a policy recommendation in June.

“The debt and liquidity crisis on the African continent is worsening the challenging socio-economic environment and constraining the fiscal space for governments to cast a safety net over their citizens,” Ramaphosa’s office said in an official statement coinciding with the conference.

The three-day high-level summit held in Yokohama, near Tokyo, focused on the economy as well as peace and stability, health, climate change, and education. Leaders and representatives from about 50 countries from the African continent, as well as officials from international organizations, stakeholders, non-profit enterprises, and business executives, participated. The summit participants adopted the “Yokohama declaration,” which was announced as part of the final summit outcomes at the media conference. The TICAD summit was last held in Tunisia in 2022. According to historical documents, Japan launched the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in 1993.