India-Africa Forum

India Africa Summit

  • Started in 2008
  • Intergovernmental attempt to give direction and thrust to bilateral synergy
  • Summits: 2008 (New Delhi); 2011 (Addis Adaba) ; 2015 (New Delhi)
  • Achievements:
    • India has committed unprecedented level of resource e.g. promise of $5bn in soft loans
    • India offered duty free access to Africa’s Least developed countries
    • Institution building and training fellowships to Africa
    • Increased People to people contact: Students, Entrepreneurs, medical tourists
    • Increased cultural and informational contacts and mutual awareness
    • Many Indian corporates have invested in Africa (India – 6% ahead of China – 3% in Private corporate investment)
  • Challenges:
    • Competition: China, US, EU, Japan also have similar arrangements & they have more resources to spare (Chinese investment – 180 bn between 2005-15)
    • Changing Dynamics in African continent:
      • Lower commodity prices
      • Greater democracy
      • Rise in militancy
      • Population growth
      • Preponderance of youth & Urbanisation
    • Less people to people contact
    • Very few direct flights from India to Africa
  • Way Forward:
    • Inject greater Bilateralism
    • Balancing the process
      • Differentiating between countries with different stage of development
      • Countries with capability need to contribute rather than being passive recipient
    • Better leverage our two strong assets
      • Indian Private sector
      • Indian Diaspora in Africa
    • Improve last mile of the delivery chain to ensure efficacy e.g. $150 mn Pan Africa e-Network project has received only limited interest
    • India needs to make more vigorous efforts to inform about its contributions e.g. during Ebola crisis despite being frontrunner in contribution India received scant acknowledgement and appreciation –> media campaigns
Summit 2015
  • Delhi Declaration
  • Infrastructure building – “Cairo to cape town, Marrakesh to Mombassa
  • Credit at concessional rates of $10 billion over 5 years (in addition to 4.7 billion that India had already pledged since 2008)
  • Grant assistance of $600 million (India-Africa dev fund , India-Africa Health fund)
Related Notes:

 

 

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