We need to leverage the diaspora in Africa- we need to connect better.
India, Africa take ties to the next level - Livemint
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday announced $10 billion in new concessional credit to Africa in an attempt to boost ties that have slackened in recent years, giving countries like China an enormous edge in the resource-rich continent.
At the opening session of the third India-Africa summit in New Delhi,
Modi also announced $600 million in grant assistance to Africa, besides $100 million to an Africa development fund and $10 million to an India-Africa health fund.
The new credit is to be disbursed in the next five years.
This is in addition to the $7.4 billion in soft loans and $1.2 billion in aid India has provided since the first India-Africa summit in 2008.
There was another announcement of 50,000 scholarships for African students, besides promises by Modi to help digitally connect Africa, from Marrakesh to Mombasa and Cairo to Cape Town, assist in infrastructure, power and irrigation development and set up industrial and information technology parks.
“Our approach is based on the... belief that the best partnership is one that develops human capital and institutions; that equips and empowers a nation to have the freedom to make its own choices and shoulder the responsibility for its own progress,” Modi said, addressing 41 heads of state and government from the 54-nation continent. Key among those attending are the president of Uganda Yoweri Museveni, Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari, Sudan’s Omar Hassan Ahmed El-Bashir, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, South Africa’s Jacob Zuma and Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
“Development of human capital in every walk of life will be at the heart of our partnership. We will open our doors more; we will expand tele-education; and we will continue to build institutions in Africa,” Modi said.
Modi said India will look at restructuring the lines of credit to better suit the needs of African partners. “We will take into account your special circumstances and we will ensure even greater speed and transparency in their utilization. As always, we will be guided by your priorities,” Modi said.
The Prime Minister also acknowledged delays by India in implementing projects, and said the government will strengthen the project-monitoring system. “This will include a Joint Monitoring Mechanism with the African Union,” he said.
India has been trying to regain the ground it has lost in Africa to China and other Asian nations, positioning itself as a partner of choice in areas such as healthcare, education and investment and trade. India-Africa trade was almost $70 billion in 2014-15 and Indian investments into Africa in the past decade amounted to $30-$35 billion.
Yet, the figures pale in comparison with the continent’s trade and investment ties with China, which has built large infrastructure projects like roads, railways, airport and government buildings.
China has invested more than $180 billion in Sub-Saharan Africa in areas ranging from energy to transportation during 2005-2015, according to a study by the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute think tank. China-Africa trade in 2014-15 alone was worth $200 billion.
Modi’s promises were aimed at backing up the theme of “partnership of prosperity” between India and Africa.
The Indian Prime Minister also sought a broad alliance for global reform—democratization of the UN Security Council, agreeing on a comprehensive convention against terrorism, forging a united position among developing countries at the upcoming Paris climate talks and an equitable global trading system ahead of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial talks to be hosted in Nairobi in December.
The third India-Africa Summit has been billed as the biggest gathering of foreign dignitaries in New Delhi since the 1983 Non-Aligned Summit. Previous India-Africa summits—the first in New Delhi in 2008 and the second in Addis Ababa in 2011—were smaller events.
The aim of the summits have been to rescript New Delhi’s ties with Africa that were politically strong in the 1960s and the 1970s, given India’s strong support to the decolonization movements in the continent. But with India adopting market reforms in the 1990s and concentrating on reshaping ties with the US, ties with the African continent slackened. Now, India sees Africa as the perfect partner for sharing its homegrown technologies as well as a source of resources and energy to fuel its economic growth.
“We will expand and extend the Pan Africa e-Network... which links 48 African countries to India and to each other. This will also help set up your Pan Africa Virtual University,” Modi said in his address.
The Prime Minister also offered India’s expertise in low-cost healthcare and pharmaceuticals, space assets and technology while promising to deepen partnerships on clean energy, sustainable habitats, public transport and “climate-resilient” agriculture.
Modi’s offers were welcomed by many leaders including South Africa’s Zuma, who said, “India has the distinct advantage of being endowed with human resource skills and technology which are relevant and can be applied to the ecological and geographic conditions of Africa. Sufficiently harnessed, it has the potential to contribute to the technological development and socio-economic improvement of many countries in Africa.”
South Africa was keen to learn from India’s experiences in vocational training in small-scale industries and entrepreneurial development, he added.
Nigerian President Buhari, meanwhile, noted that India needed to improve its trade ties amid investment flows into Africa with greater value addition and transfer of technology. “India should also be much stricter in enforcing quality of exports, especially food and medicaments, to Africa,” the Nigerian President said.
Nigeria is India’s largest trade partner in Africa with bilateral trade in 2014-15 crossing $16 billion. But several consignments of spurious drugs have been intercepted by Nigerian authorities in recent years. India insists these drugs are manufactured elsewhere and labelled as manufactured in India.
Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said India provided Africa with “a contemporary development experience which can be emulated in our own situations”. On trade, Kenyatta said both sides must shift from the traditional focus on the export of primary commodities and develop Africa’s manufacturing base.
“It is encouraging that India’s investments in Africa have steadily grown, making India the fifth largest source of foreign direct investment in Africa,” he said.
At the summit, many African countries expressed concerns about climate change, terrorism and piracy—issues Modi had raised in his speech earlier as he urged India and Africa to speak with one voice on global issues.
On the Paris climate change talks, Modi said both sides wanted “a genuine global public partnership that makes clean energy affordable; provides finance and technology to developing countries to access it; and the means to adapt to the impact of climate change”.
Modi also invited African countries to join an alliance of solar-rich countries that he was proposing to launch in Paris on 30 November—an initiative that the President of Ghana John Dramani Mahama welcomed.
On the upcoming WTO talks in Nairobi, Modi said “We should achieve a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security and special safeguard mechanism in agriculture for the developing countries.”
India is pressing for a permanent WTO deal on food stockpiling, an issue that has complicated the long-running Doha Round of negotiations. India argues that it must be allowed to store food to ensure food security for its billion plus people.
On UN reforms, Modi said the UN Security Council could not be called representative “if they do not give voice to Africa…or the world’s largest democracies with one-sixth of humanity”.
India has been aspiring for a permanent seat on an expanded Security Council, arguing that the powerful veto-wielding body fails to reflect today’s reality. To get elected to a revamped Security Council, India needs the support of Africa, which with 54 votes forms the largest voting bloc in the UN.
India’s call for a more democratized UN found resonance with many leaders, including the veteran African politician President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who called for amending the UN charter so that it is a “united equal nation... We are unequal and say no to that inequality”, he said.
Mugabe thanked Modi for the new line of credit, saying: “These are gifts highly appreciated by us. These do not come from those who have robbed us of our humanity.”
Adding her voice to the call for democratization of the UN was Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, chairperson of the African Union Commission, who said that the historic injustice of excluding India and Africa from permanent membership of the Security Council needs to be corrected.
The meeting closed with Modi saying the India-Africa summit will now on be held once every five years instead of three years.
