India’s Africa Policy

India and Africa share a history dating back millennia. The relations were shaped by traders who crossed the Indian Ocean as early as over 2000 years ago, but also by colonialism, which brought exploitation and subjugation to both regions. Mahatma Gandhi became the personification of Indo-African ties and Jawaharlal Nehru became the first architect of India’s Africa policy. However, in the first decades after independence, trade and material assistance were irrelevant; instead, the focus lay on principles and values, on sharing developmental knowledge and capacity building and on the common fight against discrimination and apartheid. Today, India is one of Africa’s biggest trading-partner countries, second only to China. The country regularly extends lines of credit worth billions to African nations, and its pharmaceutical producers dominate many African markets; almost one-fifth of India’s oil imports and more than one-quarter of its natural gas imports come from the continent. The introductory chapter lays out the research interest and research questions guiding the present study of India’s Africa policy. How have the watershed of economic liberalisation and India’s subsequent rise to the status of an emerging power affected its Africa policy and how has India engaged with Africa since the 1990s? After a cursory overview of the existing literature on India’s Africa policy, the outline of the study is presented.

This chapter lays out the research design guiding the present study of India’s Africa policy in three steps. First, the metatheoretical approach and the methodology are outlined. Subsequently, the chapter delineates the theoretical approach, which explicitly avoids a mono-factor- or mono-causal approach to foreign policy analysis. Instead, the case is put forward for a poly-factorial analysis, which allows for insights beyond the possibilities of narrow frameworks as the interplay between several ‘explanatory’ factors can also be scrutinised. Finally, the chapter presents the matrix of analysis that guides the study of India’s Africa policy. The matrix breaks down the subject into three foreign policy fields, incorporates the explanatory factors derived from the (meta-)theoretical considerations and provides a framework for analysing each foreign policy field with regard to important foreign policy dimensions: actors, instruments, geographies, institutional settings, results, normative repercussions and feedback.

This chapter analyses four main periods in Indo-African relations that either have shaped normative foundations and have been frequently invoked ever since or that form the immediate backdrop for contemporary India–Africa relations. This is done by examining early history, the colonial era and the period of decolonialisation as well as the 1960s to 1980s. Whereas in early history, traders crossed the Indian Ocean as early as over 2000 years ago, the arrival of colonialism, brought exploitation and subjugation to both regions, and the modern Indian diaspora in Africa bears witness to the indentured labourers who were brought to East and Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean islands. Later, Mahatma Gandhi became the personification of Indo-African ties, with India’s independence becoming a beacon for African liberation movements. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, supported decolonisation and the fight against apartheid from the very beginning. In the United Nations and via the Non-Aligned Movement he forcefully positioned India as the champion of the developing world. Although the final years of his tenure—as well as the immediately following decades—were characterised by some setbacks, he nevertheless had a lasting effect on the shape of India’s foreign policy and indeed on its Africa policy.

The economic dimension of India’s foreign policy radically changed in 1991. The liberalisation of the economy has had a profound impact on foreign trade and investment policy and—by extension—on India’s economic policy towards Africa. Since then, several policies have been formulated, and many schemes and instruments have been developed. Today, India is the continent’s second-most important trading partner as well as an important investor and lender. Vice versa, the continent has become more and more vital to India’s economy due not only to its reliance on primary commodities from Africa but also to Africa’s burgeoning sales market. This chapter first analyses India’s general foreign economic policy and scrutinises trade and investment policy from the 1990s to the tenure of the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After an assessment of the effects of the 1991 and post-1991 reforms on India’s economy, India’s foreign economic policy towards Africa is discussed. The chapter analyses Africa-specific policies and undertakings that India adopted after 1991 and investigates which actors influence or conduct framing, formulating, decision-making and implementing. Furthermore, an in-depth analysis of India’s trade with Africa, India–Africa investment relations and India’s lines of credit is provided.

In recent years, India has often been described as an ‘emerging donor’. However, New Delhi has a long history of development cooperation. The country’s first assistance programmes were introduced immediately following its independence, and its signature capacity-building scheme ITEC was launched in 1964, with the underlying normative principles deeply embedded in the concept of South–South Cooperation. Of course, New Delhi’s assistance to developing countries has significantly increased and changed in the last decades such that while India may not be a newly emerging actor, it is certainly an ascending actor in development cooperation. This chapter first analyses the legacy and normative foundation of India’s development cooperation policy. Subsequently, the volume, scope and evolution of India’s main development cooperation instruments and the main actors in this policy field are examined—both in general and vis-à-vis Africa. In the process, the chapter examines the developmental aspects of India’s economic relations with Africa. Three aspects are scrutinised in greater detail: first, the “aid” aspect of Indian lines of credit and their compatibility with the tenets of South–South Cooperation; second, the developmental aspects of the overall composition of trade flows and third, the developmental aspects of India’s economic relations with Africa, with a special focus on the health and agriculture sector.

Even though surging trade and investment take centre stage in many academic as well as media discussions of India–Africa relations, this focus fails to adequately reflect the scope of India’s engagement. This chapter therefore turns to India’s politico-diplomatic foreign and security policy vis-à-vis Africa—or in other words, to the genuine political and security aspects of India’s foreign policy towards the continent. First, India’s high-level diplomacy towards Africa and its diplomatic capacity are addressed. Subsequently, India’s security policy vis-à-vis Africa and the field of diaspora policy are analysed before the chapter turns to global issues as well as multilateral fora and their relevance for New Delhi’s Africa policy: It scrutinises international trade and climate policy, India’s participation in BRICS and IBSA as well as India’s relationship with the African Union and the significance of the India–Africa Forum Summits, with a special focus on the evolution of India’s Africa policy under the Modi administration.

This chapter summarises the findings of the preceding in-depth sub-studies of India’s foreign economic policy, development cooperation policy and politico-diplomatic foreign and security policy vis-à-vis Africa. Attention is directed towards the most significant aspects and developments that characterise India’s contemporary approach vis-à-vis Africa. The emerging portrayal—the ‘matrix’ of India’s Africa policy—allows for similarities and differences to be accounted for between the three foreign policy fields as well as for interdependencies as far as the respective main influences and the central foreign policy dimensions are concerned. Thus, India’s Africa policy is concisely and summarily analysed regarding actors, instruments, geographies, institutional settings, results, normative repercussions and feedback.

As the third decade of the twenty-first century begins, what is the state of India’s Africa policy? In concluding the analysis, the final chapter summarises the main argument of the study. The profound transformation of India’s Africa policy over the last two or three decades, mainly economisation and—later—indeed ‘Modi-fication’, have altered a millennia-old relationship. However, New Delhi faces enormous challenges—and India’s Africa policy will have to find satisfying answers which will affect the normative foundation of Indo-African ties. The task for Delhi is to walk the thin line between gaining more economic weight and political influence on the one hand and jeopardising the very foundation of this development by losing soft power on the other hand.