India’s Big African Opportunity

By Tim Steinecke

Image Credit: Narendra Modi via Flickr.com

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs recently announced that it would be postponing the third India-Africa Forum Summit, which had been scheduled to take place in New Delhi in December 2014. The main reason behind the decision appears to be the ongoing Ebola epidemic in Western Africa. Besides the more obvious risk of spreading the disease through intercontinental travel, it would have appeared indelicate for African heads of state to feast at banquets in New Delhi while the outbreak raged back in West Africa. Subsequently, the Indian government pushed the summit to an unspecified date in early 2015, leaving many observers to curiously await Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Africa policy, which he had been expected to reveal at the summit.

The India-Africa Forum Summit is only one of four major international initiatives that court African leaders. This year had already seen two of the others: the EU-Africa Summit in Brussels in April 2014 and the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington D.C. in August 2014. While April’s EU-Africa Summit had been held three times previously (at irregular intervals), the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit was inaugurated this year. It was widely seen as a belated attempt by Washington to counter growing Chinese influence across Africa. China arguably still leads the pack when it comes to courting African leaders, with its Forum on China-Africa Corporation (FOCAC). The fifth of these ministerial meetings – it takes place every three years – is scheduled for South Africa in 2015. With India postponing its India Africa Forum Summit, African leaders will now be able to attend summits with both India and China in 2015, which might make for some interesting comparisons.

India’s Africa summit has arguably had the weakest reach of all four meetings. The Indian government therefore made one significant change to this year’s edition: Unlike in previous years, the Indian government invited all 54 African heads of state to New Delhi. At the previous two meetings – in New Delhi in 2008 and Addis Ababa in 2011 – the number of African participants was limited to a maximum of 15 heads of state, chosen by the African Union to represent the entire African continent. Why the Indian government chose to expand the scope of the summit ultimately remains unclear. Possible explanations include the success of FOCAC and the apparently ever-increasing number of Chinese actors on the African continent; the revamped efforts by the United States and European Union to strengthen relations with African leaders at their respective Africa summits earlier this year; or attempts to increase cooperation between African states and India as part of India’s wider foreign and foreign economic policy goals.

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