Focus on political engagement at highest level
When analysing foreign trips of Government leaders, the primary focus is mostly on ‘deliverables’, such as the agreements that were signed, projects that were announced, and speeches and statements that were made. However, in some cases, the importance of the visit lies outside these deliverables, when the essence is to be found in something much more basic — which is, just the fact that the visit was even made. This is especially true for President Pranab Mukherjee's ongoing six-day, three-nation Africa tour, which has him travelling to Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Namibia. Mukherjee's visit is the first at the highest level ever for Cote d'Ivoire (no Indian President or Prime Minister has ever visited this country) and in more than two decades for Ghana and Namibia. Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao visited Ghana in 1995 and Prime Minister AB Vajpayee toured in Namibia in 1998. But that's not all. The President's tour comes just 10 days after Vice President Hamid Ansari visited two north African countries, Morocco and Tunisia, and will be followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's four-nation tour to Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya and Mozambique in July. This flurry of Indian diplomatic activity in the African continent is, of course, no coincidence — it is part of the Modi Government's larger effort to rejuvenate India's ties with Africa. That diplomacy with Africa would gain priority under the Modi Government was first signaled during the grand India-Africa Forum Summit, wherein India hosted more than 50 African heads and leaders. The summit was India's largest diplomatic outreach in several decades. The series of high level visits from Indian leaders to Africa must be seen in this context.
India's ties with Africa go back several centuries when Indian merchants first sailed to the east coast of Africa, buoyed by the monsoon winds. Even today, south-east African countries have large Indian-origin populations. Africans also came to India for trade, but many more came as soldiers, some of whom then rose to positions of power in Indian royal courts and even set up their kingdoms. During the colonial era, India stood in solidarity with African nations that were similarly oppressed, and, after independence, actively supported African nationalist movements and pushed for greater Afro-Asian cooperation. However, in the decades since then, India's engagement with continental Africa lost steam. Sure, some amount of socio-economic cooperation at the people-to-people level (think of the popular Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme) continued, and in the last decade, commercial ties also grew rapidly, but political engagement wasn't commensurate. This is what the Modi Government is changing, as it places Africa at the centre of its global diplomatic strategy. India is now looking to its partners in Africa to meet its oil and energy needs, for new markets, and for support for its diplomatic initiatives on the global stage as such UN reform.