India-Africa Forum

India Africa Summit

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: