India-Africa Bond Has Great Potential but Nothing to Do With China

India and Africa go back a long way and this has nothing to do with China, writes Shashi Tharoor.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj during her address at the India-Africa Summit in New Delhi on Tuesday. (Photo: PTI)

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi plays host this week to a galaxy of heads of state and government at the ongoing India-Africa summit in New Delhi, the event has drawn attention to a phenomenon that has largely been overlooked around the world – the emergence of India as a source, rather than a recipient, of foreign aid.

Long known for its rhetorical faith in South-South cooperation, New Delhi has for about a decade now been putting its money where its mouth used to be. It has now emerged as a significant donor to developing countries in Africa and Asia, second only to China in the range and quantum of development assistance given by countries of the global South.

The Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme (ITEC) was established as far back as 1964 but now has real money to offer, in addition to training facilities and technological know-how. In addition, India has built factories, hospitals and parliaments in various countries, and sent doctors, teachers and IT professionals to treat and train the nationals of aid recipient countries.

Comparison With China Unwarranted

• The India-Africa summit brings focus to India emerging as a source of foreign aid.
• Africa became the largest partner of India’s technical assistance and capacity building programmes.
• Unlike the Chinese, Indian employers leave behind enhanced capacities in the countries where they have worked.
• India’s peacekeeping efforts in terms of facilitating personnel has been lauded by African nations.

A History of Bonhomie

Concessional loans at trifling rates of interest (between 0.25% and 0.75%, well below the cost of servicing them) are also extended as lines of credit, tied mainly to the purchase of Indian goods and services, and countries in Africa have been clamouring for them. The India-Africa partnership has deep roots in history.

Linked across the Indian Ocean, we have been neighbours and partners for thousands of years. There was regular interaction between communities and traders, especially from the West coast of Gujarat and parts of South India with Abyssinia, Somalia, Mombasa, Zanzibar and even Mozambique.

These communities and groups played significant roles in the histories of both India and Africa. The advent of the Europeans and the colonial period disturbed these interactions but could not disrupt them. Indians migrated during the colonial era to various African countries, some as indentured labourers, many as businessmen or professionals.

Later, both India and Africa shared the pain of subjugation and the joys of freedom and liberation. Satyagraha, non-violence and active opposition to injustice and discrimination, were first used by Mahatma Gandhi on the continent of Africa.

Mahatma Gandhi always believed that so long as Africa was not free, India’s own freedom would be incomplete. Fittingly, India’s was the first and strongest foreign voice raised against apartheid and racial discrimination.

Mahatma Gandhi when he was in South Africa. (Photo: Twitter)

Comparison With China Inaccurate

India’s cooperation with Africa was based on the principle of South-South cooperation on similarities of circumstances and experiences. India was always open to sharing our strengths, our democratic model of development and our appropriate technologies that are cheap, yet effective.

Africa became the largest partner of India’s technical assistance and capacity building programmes. Unfortunately, some in India as well as abroad have been portraying the Indian relationship with Africa in terms of a competition with China for influence. It is time they stopped seeing Africa through that prism. For one thing, it posits a race we can’t win: The Chinese give vastly more money, take aid decisions faster (and fulfil them promptly) and mount giant projects with ease and speed.

More importantly, the comparison is simply inaccurate. India’s strength as an aid-giver in Africa is that it is not an intimidatingly over-developed power, but rather one whose own experience of development challenges is both recent and familiar. African countries, for instance, look at China and the West with a certain degree of awe, but do not, for a moment, believe they can become like either of them.

India, on the other hand, comes across as a land that has faced, and is still in the process of surmounting, problems rather like those confronting Africa – extreme poverty and under-development, epidemic disease, internal social and political divisions and conflicts – but we have overcome them and built a successful nation despite them. Many Africans reason: If India can do it, so can we; perhaps we can learn from India in a way we can’t from China.

(Photo: Twitter)

Good Reputation of Indian Entrepreneurs

In addition, unlike China, India does not descend on other countries with a heavy governmental footprint. The Indian private sector is a far more important player, especially since we liberalised our own economic system in 1991, and the government often confines itself to opening doors and letting African countries work with the most efficient Indian provider they can find.

This type of investment is not government-led. It seeks commercial opportunities; Indian investors are respected because they are reputed to be skilled entrepreneurs who generate employment, transfer technology and contribute to intra-African trade.

Unlike the Chinese, Indian employers do not come into a foreign country with an overwhelming labour force, live in ghettoes or impose their ways of doing things on the foreign recipients. Instead, they recruit locally, hire local labour, train workers and foremen, and leave behind enhanced capacities in the countries where they have worked.

Whereas China’s omnipresence has led to hostile nativist reactions in several African countries – a Presidential candidate in Zambia even ran twice for election on an explicitly anti-Chinese platform, once successfully – Indian businesses have faced no such reaction in the last two decades.

Indeed, Uganda, whose President Idi Amin expelled Indian settlers in 1972, has been actively wooing Indians back under President Yoweri Museveni.

(Photo Courtesy: guycalaf)

Peacekeeping Efforts

Strikingly, many African leaders and officials have studied in Indian universities and then returned home to contribute to the economic and social development of their respective countries, proud of their Indian connection.

Unlike China, India has also been extensively involved in peacekeeping efforts in Africa over the past six decades. At present, India has over 7,000 peacekeepers serving in Africa, including a 5,000 strong contingent in the Democratic Republic of Congo. India’s first full all-female formed police unit is currently deployed in Liberia.

In addition to peacekeeping, this unit has been successful in reaching out to the most vulnerable sections of the society – women and children – and the Liberians don’t want them to leave.

President Sirleaf-Johnson, herself a woman, told me that the Indian women police had succeeded in inspiring women, who have so often been victims of war, to see themselves also as sources of succour and strength in this recently war torn society – and prompted record numbers of Liberian women to apply for jobs in the security forces.

Narendra Modi with the trade Ministers from Africa. (Photo: Twitter)

Our Own Story

Finally, India accommodates itself to the desires of our African partners, advancing funds, for instance, to African regional banks or the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Its focus on building human capacity in African countries, its accessibility, and its light footprint have made India an increasingly welcome donor. In this respect, too, we are quite unlike China. Such a development, which could not have been imagined even twenty years ago, may be one of the more encouraging results of India’s emergence as a global economic powerhouse.

Let’s not spoil it with unnecessary comparisons to China. We have our own story to tell.

(Former UN Under-Secretary-General, Shashi Tharoor is a Congress MP and author.)