By
Vishal Bhidu
As India gears up to celebrate its 77th Independence Day on August 15, we look at the role played by the country across the globe, particularly in seeing Africa as a close partner for growth and development through several initiatives and support heralded to uplift the continent.
It was at the India-Africa Entrepreneurship Forum (IAEF) that the Indian High Commissioner Her Excellency Shrimati Nandini K Singla in her keynote address gave a rich insight on the role played by both India-Africa in holding the key for global rebalancing.
She observed: “India and Africa are two entities truly comparable to each other having shared history, shared geography and shared ethnic diversity as we grew free of colonialism where they are comparable to each other. It’s not a transactional relationship. Today, we both have a comparable population with 1.4 million out of nearly one billion in India and one million in Africa under the age of 35.”
India-Africa: Nation building, building economics, and building institutions
The ambassador stressed the fact that the population of both entities is sitting on a demographic dividend and reason why the IAEF conference has a strong focus on start-ups and angels laden with multiple challenges of nation-building, building economies, and building institutions.
“We, as India-Africa, hold the key for global rebalancing. India has always fought for Africa to be at the global roundtable, championing the latter rights be it during the Bandung conference in 1955, where we invited Africa. It also includes championing the right of Africa to become a member of the UNSC or its role in the World Trade Organization.”
Ambassador Singla also spoke of the personal initiatives taken by PM Shri Narendra Modi wherein under its G 20 Presidency, he wrote a letter to the President of G 20 to make it G-21 with the participation of Africa coupled with the fact that India invited three African entities such as Mauritius, Egypt, and Nigeria to be a part of the forum.
“We firmly believe that the voice of the global south developing world needs to be heard by the G-20, hence the need to be on the agenda. You cannot have global solutions to problems we have not created such as climate which is not the doing of India or the continent, rather bequeathed to us by colonialism.” “Yes, it’s true,” the ambassador insisted to an interactive audience.
“When India took over as the G-20 chair in January, the first thing that we did was host the #VoiceOfGlobalSouth Summit, where the voice of each country was put across and set up an Action plan that we will bring where the Mauritius Prime Minister will participate in the round table to make sure it is reflected on summit agenda.”
Trade and Development: Boosting capacity building and human power
The ambassador also emphasised the contribution of India with pre-eminence spanning several areas such as Development, Trade, and Investment, and health. Firstly, under the chapter on Development, she told at the outset, “India was not the poorest country in the world when it became independent 70 years ago and today we are the world’s largest fifth economy sweating blood and tears before we reached here.”
A concession loan of almost USD 30 billion was extended to Africa, a grant hovering around USD 800 million designed to fund 350 projects on the continent, out of which 200 have already been completed and spearheading projects such as parliament building, sugar industry, textile factory, water treatment, power sector and renewable energy, among others while 150 is in the pipeline.
A huge chunk of India’s support has been leveraged across the capacity building and human capacity where 42 percent were trained through scholarship and training programmes while under the I-Tec initiative, several bureaucrats and military officials have been trained together with the building of defence academics spanning across more than a dozen countries with defence training trainees. “On top of that, it is worth mentioning that 13 African Head of States studied in India,” the Ambassador added.
Secondly, as we speak about trade and investment, it’s worth mentioning that India is among the top five investments made in Africa with USD 70 billion USD investment made and the figure will be hitting USD 100 billion mark across bilateral trade.
Thirdly, the health sector is considered to be an important backbone not just in India and also encompassing the latter’s contribution across countries, percolating to the African continent. As explained by the ambassador, India is the bigger pharma supplier to Africa where half of its medical tourists to the tune of 42 percent comes from Africa.
India is leaving no stone unturned in encouraging businesses to set up private hospitals and medical colleges, offering the Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana scheme to all African countries. “We are willing to supply some generic medicine at a super affordable price similar to India, at the same rate to Africa,” she remarked.
The High Commissioner also announced that the Serum Institute of India and Bharat Bio-Tech who are the manufacturers of Astra Zeneca and COVAX will soon be setting up several vaccine manufacturing plants in Several African countries in the coming months through joint ventures.
In terms of digital, India has set up seven IT centres in Seven countries such as Egypt, Namibia, Tanzania, and South Africa, among others where the institution set in Ghana has trained 40,000 African countries who already received training in IT. There are science and Tech Parks set up, including one in Madagascar with one Tech centre functioning robustly in Zimbabwe coupled with the fact that the first IIT centre outside India was set up in Zanzibar, the latter is a branch of IIT Madras where the first head is a woman.
She also spoke on the introduction of the UPI in Mauritius which hopefully will start rolling very soon with Rupay, Rupee Vostro account, and rupee settlement mechanism where a lot is happening across the FinTech sphere while urging the African continent and Mauritius to tap into India’s Fintech powerhouse.
FinTech is truly a game-changer and I truly urge on the need to have a B2B space and come with as many planned projects,” the Ambassador insisted.
The Way Forward: FTAs, SEZ and Beyond
The Indian High Commissioner insisted and threw a thought-provoking statement for discussion: How can Mauritius be a springing boarding of Indian businesses into Africa by leveraging on the various synergies?” To put it in context, she asks, ‘Why can’t we have SEZ in Mauritius for Indian companies taking into account that Mauritius is in the process of setting up 5 SEZs in Africa, across Kenya, Madagascar, Ghana, Senegal, and Ivory Coast, among others.
The synergy that she hinged upon is the need to explore the various Free Trade Agreements such as CEPCA together with all of them the jurisdiction has partnered with such as COMESA and SADC trickling to mutual benefits. The moot question is how one can leverage similarities and complementaries between FTAs to create business opportunities between India, Mauritius, and Africa.
Ambassador Singla underlined: “I’ve been saying for the past one and half years and request business leaders to look at the complete areas of cooperation and focus on how it can happen.” She asked, “Can we leverage all these agreements with what we can have to make it a win-win for everyone? Do Indian exporters not need SEZ?”
“Finally, can we go beyond to look at Tech parks and Education Hubs in Mauritius where the Indian FinTech and Technology companies can come up with Mauritius becoming a Tech Hub? Already, the jurisdiction is a reputable IFC where the creation of a Tech Hub can leverage financial services in connecting India to Africa while at the same time, the Education Hub will be able to link Indian education institutions to students in Africa.”
In the end, the Indian Envoy also reiterated the unflinching support to Mauritius, “On behalf of the Indian Government, I can say that you will not find our support lacking by any means” as the end note.
