Latest update June 25th, 2026 12:41 AM
India re-energises Africa
As a colony of Britain, India played a very significant role in Africa, as the African countries themselves were colonised by one or another European power and struggling for independence. As Dr Walter Rodney explained in his book, “How Europe underdeveloped Africa”; the process was the same for India – and all other European colonies.
The independence of India in 1947 not only set the tone for the African anti-colonial struggle, but as they achieved that status, starting a decade later, it also pioneered the quest for a model of development that would be free from the domination by powerful states. This was the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which demanded a just international order for the ex-colonies – especially in Africa.
The Indian engagement with Africa then began with the idealistic goal of previously oppressed nations to cooperate towards developing their capabilities in order to survive and prosper in a treacherous neo-colonial world.
Poor as she was, India supported the African independence movements in every world fora to which she had access. India also extended monetary support and assistance to Africa at different phases through the Indian Technical and Economical Co-operation (ITEC) programme by sending Indian experts to different African countries in the field of new construction and development projects. African students were also given scholarships to Indian universities.
This continued beyond 1994 when apartheid was abolished in South Africa and democracy was instituted for all its peoples. By that time, the Chinese economy had been set on a new and vigorous course and was already engaged in Africa in its search for raw materials to feed its factories that served the world.
Africa had always been a land rich for its mineral resources and luxuriant forests. Minerals like gold, silver, platinum, cobalt, chromium; tantalite, manganese and uranium lie beneath the African sands – not to mention one of the world’s greatest oil reserves. But the Indian economy had remained moribund under its “License Raj” until that was finally overthrown in the 1990s. India’s engagement with Africa on a more firmly economic and commercial basis did not occur until the new millennium.
In late 2006, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh travelled to South Africa to strengthen the India-Africa relationship as part of the inauguration of the centenary celebrations of the Gandhian Sathyagraha movement in Africa. High level visits continued, and in 2008, the first ever India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) was hosted in New Delhi. This imparted new momentum to the already existing relationship with a very comprehensive plan of engagement. In May 2011, the second India-Africa forum Summit was held in Addis Ababa and this was followed by the Indian Prime Minister’s bilateral visits to Ethiopia and Tanzania.
In 2008, the nations consented to be part of an extensive trade-relations programme which would mutually benefit the countries’ trade, industry, foreign direct investment (FDI), and development of small and large scale enterprises and so on. The agricultural sector of Africa received strengthening from India through ensuring food security, capacity-building, joined partnership against agro-based diseases, enhancing markets etc. Trade and industry was focused on as part of economic development by stressing the need for two-way trade, enhancement of markets, expanding benefits of trade-liberalization etc. Further cooperation in the fields of peace and security, science, technology, political cooperation, information technology, social development, health, culture and sports, finance, tourism, media and communication were established through the joint action plan.
In the second IAFS, the programme from 2008 was given a more concrete footing – especially in regard to funding. India offered a US$5 billion line of credit; US$700 million for new institutions and training programmes and US$300 million for Ethiopia-Djibouti railway lines. All of this was in addition to the Pan-African e-Network which bridges the digital divide and is accelerating development on the African continent. The project, costing US$1 billion, supports tele-education, tele-medicine, resource mapping and e-commerce.
In this vein, in the2011 Addis Ababa declaration, India stressed that capacity-building would be the highest-priority in the India-Africa relationship and that infrastructure development and trade and investment would receive secondary preference.
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