The partnership of Africa and India has a long history, going back to the early 1920s when both regions were fighting against colonial rule and oppression.
- In 1964, India launched the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) program to provide technical assistance through human resource development to other developing countries, with African countries the greatest beneficiaries of it and the Special Commonwealth African Assistance Programme (SCAAP).
- The total trade growth of India with Africa grew from US$ 6.8 billion in 2003 to US$ 76.9 billion in 2018, and India is now Africa’s third-largest trade partner.
- Indian investments in Africa have also grown rapidly in the last decade and the country is currently the seventh-largest investor in Africa
- India has sanctioned 182 LoC projects in Africa through the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank of India, with a total credit commitment of about US$ 10.5 billion. Indian LoCs have significant developmental impacts in Africa.
- The irrigation project by Senegal lead six-fold increase in rice production and benefit a large population
- The sugar factory installed a water-purification plant, which benefited nearly 10,000 villagers who previously relied on untreated water, and pastoralists in the region now have access to a stable source of income.
- India-Africa cooperation has also focused on techno-economic capacity building. Skill development and capacity building featured prominently in all the India-Africa Forum Summits, and in a speech to the Ugandan parliament in 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
- India’s growth story and the importance most African leaders attach to ICT sector development. The Pan African e-Network, launched in 2009, was a groundbreaking initiative to extend Indian expertise in IT to provide better healthcare and education facilities in 53 African countries.
- E-VidyaBharti and e-ArogyaBharti (eBAB), was started in 2018, to provide free tele-education to 4,000 African students each year for five years.
- In the 3rd forum of India- Africa, India pledged to provide 50,000 scholarships to African students over five years and set up institutions of higher learning in Africa.
- An initiative like “Study in India’, which was launched in 2018, attracted students from neighboring and African countries.
- India and Africa worked together on global platforms to guard the interests of other developing countries, Joint proposals, such as the Agricultural Framework Proposal and Protection of Geographical Indications, at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and World Intellectual Property Organisation, and have worked towards protecting the food and livelihood concerns of farmers at the Doha Development Round of WTO negotiations.
- An important point to mention is that Nearly half of all member countries in the International Solar Alliance, initiated by India, are from Africa.
- India has provided 270 metric tonnes of food aid (155 metric tonnes of wheat flour, 65 metric tonnes of rice, and 50 metric tonnes of sugar) to Sudan, South Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea, and supplied essential medicines (including hydroxychloroquine and paracetamol) to over 25 African countries. And also help for vaccines.
The coming decade presents massive development challenges for India and Africa, which have both been severely affected by the socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. India’s GDP declined by 8 percent in 2020 and about 10.9 million jobs were lost across the country.
The COVID-19 pandemic is also expected to completely wipe out economic progress made by Sub-Saharan Africa in the previous decade.
The impactful way for India and Africa to work in cooperation for development is –
- A clear strategy for African development:
- Continue the current focus on capacity building:
- Harness Indian civil society organizations, NGOs, and Indian diaspora
- Promote development-friendly private investments:
- Completion of projects timely manner
- Address concerns about an academic experience in India
- Improve the experiences of Africans in India
Source –