India's Africa policy: Why New Delhi prefers strategic engagements over saturating the entire continent with projects

The visit of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to Africa is significant. The visit evenly balanced time spent in Uganda in eastern Africa and Mozambique in southern Africa with a stopover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to meet his counterpart. It shows that India’s interest in Africa continues and the spirit of articulating the priorities of the Global South is accentuated.

It has been some time since the EAM visited Africa having been to Niger and Tunisia in 2020.

This visit comes in the midst of a busy diplomatic calendar focusing on the G20 presidency. Time was found to visit strategic partners in Africa.

Uganda is significant as a country in eastern Africa, which has a long-standing President Yoweri Museveni. He is one of the oldest and most well-known leaders in Africa, president since 1986, and hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018. While addressing the Ugandan parliament, Modi enunciated India’s 10 principles for engaging with Africa.

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Uganda seeks closer economic engagement with India and has been one of the consistent partners and participants at the India-Africa Conclave. It prefers private Indian trade and investment to government-led lines of credit which it has rarely used. Grant projects in Uganda too have not been very successful. A new effort is being made to establish a campus of the National Forensic Sciences University in Jinja. The temporary campus of that was inaugurated by India’s EAM. This is rather a quick action because the agreement between the NFSU  and the Ugandan Ministry of Defence only took place in late 2022. In the past, Uganda has been offered a campus of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, which for various reasons fell through. Uganda is pursuing a solar energy-based water supply system which will serve 20 districts under a buyers credit arrangement.

Uganda has an insurgency problem particularly an uneasy relationship with Rwanda. Uganda is also at the forefront of providing troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia. It has suffered several casualties. An Indian Army military training team has been in Uganda since 2010, training the military through their academy giving India a strategic role in engaging with them. The Ugandan army participated in the AFINDEX military exercise held in Pune in late March. Their deputy FM participated in the virtual Voice of Global South meeting in January 2023.

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Mozambique appears much more on India’s diplomatic horizon in Africa. A large number of projects financed by lines of credit and grants, the entry of many significant Indian companies, the role of Mozambique in energy security of India and India’s security cooperation with Mozambique particularly in dealing with its ongoing insurgency in the northern province of Cabo Delgado all play a role. President Filipe Nyusi participated in the Leaders segment of the Voice of Global South Summit and emphasised debt management development cooperation.

Mozambique has received over $10 billion in Indian investment both in MSMEs and in larger projects relating to coking coal and gas where Indian PSU and private sector players are deeply involved. When the plans fully fructify, India’s investment in Mozambique would double to about $20 billion or more. With the insurgency curbed, the OVL gas project will soon restart.

Mozambique is a significant partner of India through security cooperation. India has assisted the police forces and the Coast Guard by providing equipment including more recently Coastal Patrol vessels. A coast guard repair and maintenance team is located there now. Indian naval ships frequently visit Mozambique on goodwill visits as well as to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Mozambique has unfortunately been hit by cyclones over the last few years and Indian ships provide early and quick succour.

Mozambique is one African country in which India has major involvement in the infrastructure sector. The railways have been providing equipment and services to Mozambique, and EAM had the proud moment of taking a train journey in Indian-built train sets. 6 locomotives and 90 coaches were provided to Mozambique by RITES. EAM discussed green transport and mobility since India’s own growth in green mobility looks like a useful model for Mozambique to work with.

Mozambique has been one of the leading recipients of lines of credit from India in Africa along with Tanzania and Ethiopia. These LOCs catalysed the implementation of projects in a diverse range, including in solar energy, training institutions, and infrastructure; a 132-km long road and bridge project is a significant connectivity project. The LOCs catalysed trade and investment to much higher levels.

Mozambique and Uganda are clearly favoured countries in Africa. They have both been visited by Prime Minister Modi and by several delegations thereafter. Modi had visited Mozambique in 2016 on his earliest visit to Africa and was accompanied by S Jaishankar, the then foreign secretary. Modi also visited Uganda in 2018 when he made his second visit to Africa.

The bilateral engagement with these countries is evidently strong. Ethiopia is emerging from civil war and in the stopover at Addis Ababa, the Indian external affairs minister met with his counterpart Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Demeke Mekkonen at a pre-breakfast meeting set up at short notice. Debt relief is a major issue for Ethiopia which is caught in the vortex of the US-China rivalry.

Beyond the bilateral, there is the multilateral level, and here, India’s leadership of the Global South and its current chairmanship of the G20, give it a higher stature for engagement and perhaps larger expectations from Africa. Mozambique has been hesitant in assuming regional or Pan-African leadership positions as it is involved in consolidating its domestic agenda. However, it is currently in the UNSC having started its term in January 2023 and held the Chair in March. Uganda has a greater willingness to take on international roles. It hosted the Commonwealth Summit in 2007. Now, for 2023- 2025, it is the incoming president of the non-aligned movement. The meeting in Uganda had a clear statement of support from India for Uganda’s NAM chairmanship. India is likely to enhance its engagement with NAM.

When the African Union is concerned, the relationship with India has lost some of its sheens and needs to be refurbished. It is not clear whether the India-Africa summit was discussed with any of the interlocutors because it is now the turn of Africa to host IAFS IV. The African Union is reportedly looking for hosts for the occasion. All three countries that the external affairs minister engaged with, Uganda Mozambique and Ethiopia could be possible hosts for IAFS IV expected this year.

The third aspect is that India now seems to be dealing with Africa on a strategic basis, rather than trying and saturate the whole continent with projects and engagement. Now that most of the 18 new embassies in Africa have opened, India is diplomatically well represented.

The strategy now seems to be to work with those countries where there are greater prospects of economic engagement, where strategic interests coincide and where Indian development cooperation can meet the priorities of the countries in a fulsome manner. Therefore, during the Indian external affairs minister’s visit, there were no major announcements of new lines of credit, but certainly efforts to consolidate grant projects and see them to fruition. The fact that with both Uganda and Mozambique, India has military training and security cooperation engagement shows that India’s desire to deal with insurgencies, radicalisation, and terrorism is now meaningful and being pursued as an agenda for cooperation with select African countries.

The author is a former ambassador to Germany, Indonesia, Ethiopia ASEAN and the African Union. He tweets @AmbGurjitSingh. Views expressed are personal.

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