More than 40 high-level ministers and dozens of businessmen from various African countries visited India in July for a key investment meeting aimed at boosting trade relations between the two parties.
Addressing the two-day meeting, which was attended by ministers from countries including Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Sudan and Nigeria, India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar stressed that India’s bilateral trade with Africa “it reached 89,500 million dollars (86,450 million euros) in 2021. -2022 compared to 56,000 million dollars the previous year.”
India’s main exports to Africa are refined petroleum products and pharmaceuticals, while Africa mainly exports crude oil, gold, coal, and other minerals.
Meanwhile, the South Asian nation’s Trade and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal stressed New Delhi’s intention to reach a trade pact with Africa. That’s because the long-term economic outlook “is going to be rosy for both India and Africa, because this is where the markets and opportunities are,” he told the conclave.
India has become one of the top five investors in Africa in recent years, with cumulative investments in the continent amounting to about $74 billion.
Mauritius, Mozambique, Sudan, Egypt and South Africa have been the main recipients of Indian investment.
Indian companies are also increasingly active in resource-rich countries like Ghana and Nigeria.
Several Indian multinationals already have significant interests in the region, with strategic sectors including agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, information and communication technology (ICT) and energy.
reaching out to china
India-Africa relations go back a long way and the two share a unique bond due to their shared colonial experience in the past.
While there is an emphasis on tapping into these historic ties, New Delhi’s relationship with Africa has become more strategic of late, said Barnaby Dye, a researcher who focuses on development policy in Africa at the University of Manchester. . “South-South cooperation is a genuine instinct, but there are other strategic concerns such as trade, security and the fight against China,” he said.
China has become Africa’s largest economic partner, with $254 billion worth of two-way trade last year, a 35% jump from 2020.
Over the past decade, Beijing has pumped billions of dollars into Africa, building roads, bridges and power facilities in exchange for access to markets and resources.
India is wary of China’s growing influence on the continent.
In 2015, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted a summit in New Delhi to explore how to strengthen India’s long-standing ties with countries on the continent.
And in 2018, while addressing the Ugandan Parliament, Modi outlined what became known as the “Kampala Principles”, a set of 10 guiding principles for India’s engagement with Africa, including the Prime Minister’s vision on how to promote economic growth and address challenges. such as terrorism and climate change. “Africa will be at the top of our priorities,” Modi said at the time.
New Delhi has also provided millions of dollars in educational and humanitarian aid to boost its soft power.
Cultivating person-to-person ties
Africa is home to around 3 million people of Indian origin, of whom more than 1 million call South Africa home; Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda also have large numbers of Diaspora Indians.
“There is an Indian diaspora presence because there was movement between people from India to East Africa in colonial times,” said Ruchita Beri, an Africa expert at the Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis in New Delhi.
Veda Vaidyanathan, a policy researcher at Harvard University who specializes in Asia-Africa engagement, said the large Indian diaspora contributed to the goodwill New Delhi enjoys in African capitals.
The challenge moving forward would be a matter of maintaining the diaspora-generated momentum that already exists, he added.
Dye noted that on a person-to-person level, people of Indian origin were well entrenched in the East African business elite.
“Given the history of trade and migration, India’s initial push into Africa was much less state-driven and much more organic,” he stressed, adding: “But there is much more state involvement of late, as seen can see in the forums and dialogues between the governments of African countries and India”.
The enormous economic potential of Africa
It’s not just India. Other countries, such as the US and Russia, have also increased their engagement with Africa in recent years.
The continent has many of the fastest growing economies in the world, and its total GDP currently stands at around $2.6 trillion.
Despite political, economic and security challenges in some nations, Africa as a whole is projected to have nearly a quarter of the global workforce and consumer market by 2030, making the continent an attractive partner for governments and businesses around the world.
In this context, Dye said that economically, China, the US and former colonial powers such as France and the UK will continue to play a key role in Africa.
But Vaidyanathan said the situation on the mainland was changing. “The power dynamic is changing. Major developing countries are reinventing traditional engagement frameworks and providing alternatives, which is changing the status quo.”
Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru
