Al Ahram, P.6 (6-4-2008)

Africa and India

Similarities between India and Africa and the reasons behind fostering bilateral cooperation

By: Hani Assal

    The Indian capital, New Delhi, will host on April 8-9, 2008 the first India-Africa Summit, which seeks to draw up a mechanism for fostering political, economic and social partnership between the two sides. In fact, these efforts are meant to make use of the latent potentials in their countries in this new age of economic and political blocs and alliances. All countries in today's world are looking for their own interests and so the two sides, namely, India and Africa should start thinking in this direction.

What is the background about this summit? What are the motives behind holding it? What are similarities and differences between Africa and India? What can each party offer to the other? All these questions and others, we will try to answer in the report we published in this page.

It is clear that the conditions of the African continent (problems, conflicts and natural resources) are very similar to those of the Indian subcontinent. However, the second has taken wide strides in terms of democratic and economic reforms, thus joined the ranks of emerging countries, which are capable of competing the major countries in the long run.

It is the common interests and not just the similarities that prompted both India and Africa to work for enhancing their cooperation. Moreover, the two sides enjoy deeply-rooted relations, which resulted in the foundation of NAM in the middle of last century. Also, India has a long record of support for struggle and liberation movements in the African continent. Furthermore, India has always been advocating key Arab issues, on top of which comes the Palestinian cause. Such strong and positive relations helped building mutual confidence between India and Africa, which can form a strong basis for present and future cooperation.

In light of the severe competition between the US and European countries over the natural resources of Africa, which pays no heed to the interests of African nations, India has emerged as a key economic, political and commercial fair partner of Africa. It seems that it is time to revive rapprochement between the two sides in a way that can serve their interests in the era of globalization.

In this age of alliances and blocs, it seems appropriate to activate cooperation between the Indian giant and the African continent. Politically, the two sides are not members of any political or military alliances at the continental or international levels, like the EU or the NATO.

At the same time, the almost regular participation of the Indian forces in the UN international peace-keeping missions in African countries, such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Sir Leone, Eritrea and Democratic Republic of Congo, is another factor that helps rapprochement between the two sides.

On the other hand, India has a marvelous experience in field of democracy as well as in political and economic reforms. India has also achieved tangible economic results, which enabled it to join the ranks of emerging economic powers, such as Brazil, Argentina and China.

Furthermore, India itself is highly interested in having cooperation with Africa. During the G-8 Summit, which was held in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg in 2006, the conferees came up with a working paper on "Partnership Between India and Africa".

Economically, India is one of the major economic and commercial powers in the world today, given its massive exports of oil products, textiles, jewelry, chemicals and leather products. Most of India's trade partners are outside Africa, such as the US, UAE, China and the UK. India is need of raw materials, such as oil, machinery and fertilizers. Among the top destinations of imports to India are China, the US, Germany and Singapore. This means that none of India's largest trade partners is from Africa.

It is worth mentioning that the volume of trade exchange between Egypt and India reached US$ 1 billion in 2005. In fact, this figure is very modest and is not up to the deeply-rooted historical relations between the two sides. South Africa is one of the African countries with which India enjoys good economic relations, as trade exchange between them exceeds US$ 2.3 billion.

Both Africa and India can cooperate in different fields, such as mechanized agriculture, supply of potable water, food security and human resources development.

It is worth mentioning that India spent more than US$ 1 billion on cooperation programmes with Africa, most of which cover the fields of development, education and infrastructure projects, such as electricity, railways and textile machinery. Moreover, the two sides exchange expertise in fields, like preparing of feasibility studies.

Both India and Africa share the same social traditions and customs, such as religious and ethnic diversity, caste system and cultural pluralism. It is note worthy that there are some communities in Africa of Indian origins.

On the other hand, India can offer assistance to Africa in the field of combating epidemic diseases, such as diarrhea, Hepatitis C virus (HCV), AIDS, typhoid, malaria and dengue fever. 

The two sides face common educational problems, as both of them are combating illiteracy. It is worth mentioning that illiteracy rate in India reached 39%.

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