Over the past few months, there has been a renewed momentum in the outreach that the Government of India has undertaken with respect to countries in the African region. Multiple high-ranking officials have paid visits, attempting to make further inroads into the African continent, with constant bilateral engagements and partnership agreements already in place or in progress. A reflection of this posturing can be seen in the recent visit of the External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to co-chair the meeting of the India-Kenya Joint Commission in the month of June this year.As home to about 80,000 persons categorised as Persons of Indian Origin and 20,000 Indian citizens, Kenya is widely recognised as the gateway to continental Africa. The simple fact that the External Affairs Minister ensured his physical presence at the meeting, despite the COVID-induced pandemic, only serves to prove the significance that India has been attaching to its relations with Kenya and the African continent at large. In the course of the visit, the representatives of Kenya and India discussed a plethora of issues that were bilateral, regional as well as global in nature. These included, but were not limited to, developmental partnerships, healthcare services and maritime security in the Indian Ocean region. In an attempt to consolidate its foothold within the continent through regular high-level visits and other sustained efforts, India has been able to successfully reinforce its image as one of Africa’s foremost development partners. During the widespread gloom of the COVID-19 pandemic, India kept almost all its supply lines open thereby ensuring that critical medical equipment, medicines and other supplies could reach the countries in need. Even the wrath of a devastating wave of the virus could not stop India from showcasing its stability and reliability as a partner and an ally. Under India’s landmark 'Vaccine Maitri' initiative, India gifted 150 metric tonnes of medical supplies to 25 African countries. In addition, India supplied 25 million doses of vaccines that were produced within the country to 42 countries in the African region. However, the second wave of COVID hit India badly in the months of April and May and consequently, it served a major blow to the vaccination programmes of African countries that had mostly relied upon supplies from the global COVAX vaccine-sharing facility. Despite these setbacks and other challenges on various fronts, India in partnership with South Africa managed to garner significant support for a patent waiver to produce vaccines locally from the World Trade Organisation. This solitary waiver could potentially save billions and further augment the capacity of developing countries to manufacture vaccines and other significant medical products. Their joint initiative has opened up numerous possibilities for other developing nations too to explore, especially when it comes to critical medical supplies. The Indo-African relationship is firmly rooted in deep historical and political ties. Even before we attained independence from the colonial rule of Britain, prominent leaders of the national movement in India would issue calls of support for the anti-racist and anti-colonial liberation struggles that were taking place in Africa back then.Though the foundation was based on this shared legacy of anti-colonial struggles, the 1990s saw a shift towards liberalisation in India leading to a change in the equation of engagement with various nations. It is now significantly based on matters of trade, commerce and economic considerations. Despite the deepened ties with Africa, spanning across seven decades, India till very recently had hardly developed a clear strategic vision as to how to leverage its relations with these countries. In fact, the goodwill that India had gained during the days of the African liberation struggles and the Non-Aligned Movement has not adequately been capitalised upon either. Nevertheless, with changing times and India’s increased presence at the global stage, there is hope that things are changing for the better. With ideological issues and political alignments riding pillion, it is the arena of economic ties along with the advent of technology that have infused a new vigour into India’s relationship with the African countries. Security is another aspect that has come under close consideration, with a special emphasis on the maritime aspect. Over the last few years, multiple forums like the India-Africa Forum Summit have come into existence. Providing India as well as the African countries a platform to engage constructively, summits like the aforementioned have helped institutionalize and formalisethe relations between countries better. Multiple study reports have focused on collaborative mechanisms such as the Export-Import Bank of India highlighting the fact that the relationships are on an upward spiral. These meetings are primarily designed as a participative collaborative exercise to build skill, plan measures and execute policy decisions towards alleviation of poverty and overall development. The areas of focus have been healthcare, agriculture, maritime security, climate change and bringing about a technological revolution in Africa. African countries, with their long coastlines along the Indian Ocean, do have a significant role to play when it comes to the Indo-Pacific region as well as augmenting India’s strategy with respect to maritime security. These African nations form a critical part of India’s Indo-Pacific strategy with the country having signed multiple defence, trade and shipping agreements over the last few years. With the growing Chinese interferences in the Indo Pacific waters, popularly known as the ‘Necklace of Diamonds strategy’, it becomes imperative for India to develop close coordination with coastal African nations loosely based on the coordination mechanism that it has employed with Australia and Japan as well. In the past 15 years, India has managed to up the ante by extending concessional lines of credit, grants, loans and developing other capacity-building initiatives in the African region. However, unlike similar lines of credit that are offered by the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, the ones that India offers are not subject to any conditionalities. Further, these are not opaque or full of secret clauses aimed at trapping countries in a debt loop like the concessional loans offered by China. Essentially, these are by far the most transparent, consultative, non-conditional, demand-driven lines of credit that can be offered by one country to another. In fact, through this mechanism, in the past two decades, India has managed to successfully extend around $10 billion in concessions to the region as well as contribute $300 million in university scholarships granted to African students. 17 In addition to the above, there is the ever-growing trade and investment relationship that India shares with the region. From a decent $52 billion, the trade has grown at a rapid pace of 29.5% to reach $68 billion in the last one decade alone. In the same period between the years 2010-11 and 2019-20, African exports to India have increased by around $5 billion signalling the establishment of a new market for African goods in the country. In a short period of time, every 1 in 10 goods reaching Africa from outside has begun to come from India. Therefore, despite the snail paced start, India has managed to become the eighth-largest investor in Africa through its public and private sector ventures. Further, multiple successful digital tech-driven companies have managed to gain a strong foothold in the region as well. Recently, after the Nigerian government banned Twitter, an Indian micro blogging network start-up – Koo – managed to gain significant following and an active user base in that nation. In fact, the Nigerian government officially joined the network with local African languages being added to the platform. Spreading its wings beyond India, this sudden surge in Koo’s user base also led to marquee investors joining the firm leading to a five-fold jump in its valuation to $100 million in just a few months of its existence. Against this background, it is pertinent to mention that India is still only one among the long list of development partners that are looking to engage constructively with Africa. By far, China has emerged as the leading trade and investment partner for the African countries. With Africa’s Agenda 2063, India’s alignment is strongly focused on developmental goals and setting the growth agenda for the next five decades of the century. Essentially, India’s focus has been on human resource development, education, healthcare and information technology. However, China’s focus has been on expanding the manufacturing capacity and extracting natural resources from the African nations to suit its own interests. In a classic case of neo-imperialism, the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative being pursued by China is driven to connect itself with the trade markets of Europe. But gradually, it has taken the shape of a debt trap mechanism by virtue of which China takes control of the infrastructure that it has helped develop and then turn it into a military base.It is suspected that with the huge economic resources it has pumped into Africa, the region could easily be China’s next target for vested interests. Most Chinese firms in Africa are often accused of predominantly employing Chinese workers and offering little or no training /skill development programmes for their African employees. While large-scale infrastructure projects may well be the future, they cannot have the desired effects if no locally-sourced talents are trained or if local production is not suitably encouraged. Therefore, most of these projects run the risk of turning into unviable, debt inducing projects, sooner than later just like the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka.Interestingly, though the politico-economic model that China offers seems attractive to Africans, public support for democracy and community-driven partnerships that India offers is rated much higher by African nationals in most psephologically-driven studies. From the outset, Indian firms have relied more upon local talent and not just local raw materials. In fact, India could gain a lot more from projecting its own model as being vastly different from the one that China has to offer. Unlike China, India also possesses the additional advantage of having a shared history of colonial subjugation as well as cultural proximity that has emerged out of centuries of imperialism. Further, India is blessed with a thriving 3 million-strong Indian Diaspora in Africa that has the power to bridge the gap between distant geographies. It is certain that the guiding principles for India would be to engage in partnerships which are inclusive, people-centric, sustainable, transparent and driven by African needs and priorities as elaborated by the Prime Minister of India in his address to the Ugandan Parliament in July 2018. With this vision, it is hoped that an enriching partnership model is sustained that would prove beneficial to both partners with gains meant for the common citizens.
from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3fEFym1
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