India-Africa relations prospering on mutual respects & co-operations among others

Dating back several centuries, the relations between India and African countries are driven and shaped by a number of factors, including trade and investments, cultural, historical and political engagements. A youthful demography, fast-growing economies and vast amount of natural resources are something that both sides enjoy, causing envy and interest in rest of the world. These are the things that have prompted the 5 days visit of Vice President Venkaiah Naidu from 30th of May to 3rd of June, 2022 to Gabon and Senegal. In the last leg of his visit, the Vice President will be in Qatar from 4th to 7th of June.

This is the first visit from India at the level of Vice President to all three countries and the first-ever high-level visit from India to Gabon and Senegal. The visits to Gabon and Senegal are set to add momentum to India’s engagement with Africa and emphasise India’s commitment to this continent as Africa is increasingly becoming important to India’s foreign policy calculations also.

Vice President completed his first leg of visit to Gabon from 30th of May to 1st of June 2022. During the visit, he held delegation level talks with Prime Minister of Gabon H.E. Rose Christiane Ossouka Raponda. Vice President also called on President of Gabon H.E. Ali Bongo Ondimba and met other dignitaries. He also interacted with the business community in Gabon and addressed Indian diaspora. Both sides held a series of bilateral engagements advancing cooperation across spheres including trade, investment, energy, ICT, capacity building, health, pharmaceuticals and more.

More than 50 Indian companies are engaged in Gabon Special Economic Zone (GSEZ), the place Vice President visited Wednesday. Both sides signed two MoUs for establishing Joint Commission and Diplomats’ training. Around 800 Indians are living in Gabon, engaged in infrastructure projects, trading and exports of timber and metal scrap.

India and Gabon are currently non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and bilateral trade between the reached 1.12 US dollar in 2021-22. Under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) and ICCR schemes, a number of Gabon nationals pursue education in India under scholarship and training programmes offered here.

Similarly, India and Senegal bilateral trade reached 1.65 billion in 2021-22 with Indian offering a total of 16 lines of credit amounting to 350 million US dollar and Buyers Credit of about 305 US dollar in various sectors. However, comparing with these African countries India has much larger trade and people to people relations with Qatar and other Muslim countries. India-Qatar bilateral trade has already cross 15 billion US dollar in 2021-22 with Qatar committing investments of over 2 billion US dollar in various Indian companies over the past two years. Besides, more than 7.5 lakh Indian are living in Qatar.

Coming back to the growing relations with Africa- not only India but rest of the globe is also far more interested in this continent today than any time in history.

India and Africa’s historical links and relations have experienced a revival in recent years and both sides understand the fact that it is a win-win situation as growing relations are mutually beneficial. India-Africa trade has grown to around 66.7 billion US dollar in 2019-20. Around 8% of Indian imports are from Africa and around 9% of Africa’s imports are from India. The investment of India’s public and private sector enterprises are increasing in Africa, making it the 8th largest investor in African.

In recent years, besides loan and investment, India has also given ample amount of aid to Africa to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Under the Vaccine Maitri initiative, India supplied 24.7 million doses of Made of India Covid vaccines to 42 countries in Africa.

Clearly, India looks to engage with Africa meaningfully, focusing much on its core competencies like human resource development, training and skill development, IT, ITES, education and healthcare services unlike China who focuses majorly on developing manufacturing capacities and infrastructure in Africa. While, China’s economic model of engagement with Africa looks attractive and has also paid rich dividend in recent years, the fascination for India’s support for democratic practices, processes, institutions and people to people engagement is high in Africa.

India also has an advantage of language and cultural affinity. English is far more prevalent among the people in African countries than any other language, making it much easier for Indian to interact with African people. Moreover, over 3 million strong Indian diaspora in Africa also proves to a crucial strategic asset for India to further its relations with African countries.

Over half a dozen countries in Africa are among the fastest developing economies including Rwanda, Senegal, and Tanzania, making it one of the growth pole of the world. Real GDP in Africa in the past decade has grown almost twice. African continent has a population of over one billion with a combined GDP of 2.5 trillion dollars, which makes it a huge market.

Taking these all things into account, India is making consistent efforts towards strengthening relations with Africa. Launched in 2008, India’s duty-free tariff preferential scheme for Least Developed Nation has benefited 33 African states. The India–Africa Forum Summit- the official platform for the African-Indian relations, is also contributing immensely to this building up process.

In the past, the geographical proximity and easy navigability in Indian Ocean resulted in well-established trade relations between India and Africa, much before the European exploration.