Former diplomat Rajiv Bhatia’s India-Africa Relations: Changing Horizons, is an essential reader on India’s burgeoning ties with African states

While reflecting on the continent’s development, Bhatia asserts that Africa not merely has some of the fastest growing economies but 16 African countries have witnessed over five per cent growth rate. However, Africa still is not integrated well within the world economy. Apart from the advent of megacities such as Luanda, Kinshasa, Cairo and Johannesburg, about 38 per cent of the people in Africa live under democratic regimes although democracy rests on fragile foundations. In a bird’s eye view of Indo-African ties in the last century, the author has discussed the role of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in consolidating them. In spite of Gandhi’s opposition to racism and colonialism, in countries such as Ghana and Malawi, the people brought down Gandhi’s statue because of the general sentiment that he fought primarily for the interests of the Indian community during his sojourn in Africa. However, Nehru’s India contributed more concretely through forums like the United Nations (UN) to precipitate the process of decolonisation in Africa.

Bhatia takes a nuanced and differentiated view of African countries in terms of their incomes, resources and levels of development to provide a lucid appraisal of the relationships between Africa and international organisations such as the European Union (EU) and G20, as well as significant powers including the USA, Japan, Russia, Turkey, the UAE, Indonesia, Republic of Korea, Australia and Brazil. The analyses systematically unveil growing reciprocity and interdependence of interests between the different actors. In the process, the significance of Africa’s rich mineral resources, geo-strategic locations of significant regions such as the Horn of Africa or southern Africa, continued necessity of promoting development cooperation between different powers and African states gets thoroughly discussed. China’s expansive role through trade, business, commerce, military cooperation, in extracting industries as well as in building infrastructure has been evaluated in a separate chapter.

Although India cannot compete with China, it has emerged as the third-largest trading partner of Africa and the number of its embassies are growing in Africa. In the realm of security, India has contributed to UN peacekeeping operations in several conflict-ridden African countries. To ensure energy security, India has invested in oil-rich states such as Sudan, Nigeria and Angola. As a major Indo-Pacific state, India has been playing a significant role in the southwest Indian Ocean to bolster maritime security by establishing rapports with states including Mauritius, Seychelles and Mozambique. India’s investments through public as well as private sector companies have been consistently mounting in Africa. The India Africa Forum Summits meetings held in 2008, 2011 and 2015 offered India an opportunity to institutionalise its ties with most of the African countries in economic, trade, commercial, military, educational and cultural spheres.  Bhatia has offered a detailed comparative analysis of the outcomes of all these summits. For ready reference, the study provides handbook-like data on India’s relationship with 15 most significant African countries.

The book also provides a fairly comprehensive view of the status of NRI and PIO Indians in Africa and Africans in India. Ironically, Indians are critical of Australia when it practises racism towards Indians but are quite insensitive when African students become victims of racism in India.

Rajen Harshé is former vice chancellor, Central University of Allahabad, and a leading scholar in African and international-relations studies