- Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Kenya to co-chair, along with his Kenyan counterpart, Raychelle Omamo, the third meeting of the India-Kenya Joint Commission
- Africa Continental is home for a home to 80,000 people formally categorized as Persons of Indian Origin
- Representative talks about a variety of bilateral, regional, and global issues, including development partnership, health care delivery, and ensuring maritime security in the Indian Ocean region.
- India along with South Africa has championed a patent waiver for the vaccines at the World Trade Organization to augment developing countries’ capacity to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines and medical products.
- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the Ugandan Parliament in July 2018, shared 10 guiding principles for India’s Africa engagement. These pillars reflect a change in the nuances of India’s priorities
- India considers African countries, especially those with coasts on the Indian Ocean, to be a critical part of its Indo-Pacific strategy, and shares a rich history of maritime trade with these nations in particular, and it has signed defense and shipping agreements with many of them.
- The trade and investment partnership has also been growing, Indian-African trade has grown from $51.7 billion in 2010-2011 to $66.7 billion in 2019-2020. Africa’s exports to India have also increased by around $5 billion.
- India has also gifted 150 [metric tons] of medical aid to 25 [African] countries. ‘Vaccine Maitri’ initiated around 24.7 million doses of Made in India COVID vaccines as grants, and commercial and COVAX supplies to 42 countries in Africa.
- China is a competitor which has emerged as Africa’s leading trade and investment partner and has thrown its immense economic heft into developing manufacturing capacity and extracting natural resources. India is focusing on core competencies of human resource development, information technology, education, and health care.
- Chinese firms are often accused of employing mostly Chinese workers and offering little training and skills development for African employees, whereas, Indian project construction and financing in Africa is aimed at facilitating community participation and development.
- Indian firms rely more on African talent, and India has some other advantages over China –
- India Plays its strengths by projecting itself as a different model than China
- An added advantage of language and cultural affinity and proximity
- This makes it much easier for Indian contractors and labor to converse with local partners, the Indian diaspora in Africa, which is over 3 million strong, has been a crucial strategic asset to bridge the gap between the two geographies.
- India is hoping sustained engagement with African nations over the last few years will yield foreign-policy dividends. And for both India and its African partners, if their engagement pays off, it could mean a relationship that is based on a partnership model.
- India’s growing Africa engagement will perhaps be able to bring more equitable benefits to both partners.
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