India’s Africa success rests on implementation
At a time when it is tempting to engage in high-pitched rhetoric and bombast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while highlighting India's positive role in Africa during the third India-Africa Forum Summit, also acknowledged some failings. This is an important assessment which shows the Modi Government’s seriousness in revamping the India-Africa partnership. The first step here is to fix the existing model of cooperation. The fundamentals of this model, based on the principles of South-South cooperation, are strong. However, sometimes the implementation is weak. Take, for example, the lines of Credit that India extends to African nations. The loCs are soft loans that, in this past decade, have helped fund several large and small infrastructure and development projects across continental Africa. They have redefined the traditional donor-recipient relationship because it is not the Government of India but the Government of the recipient nation that decides which project will be implemented with how much money. At its end, the Government of India only insists that at least 75 per cent of the contract is awarded to an Indian firm. And here too, it does not have a say in which Indian firm will get the contract; that is decided through an independent bidding process, carried out by the recipient Government. Generally, this is a good system that shields New Delhi from accusations of corruption, nepotism etc. However, this has also meant that New Delhi has almost no oversight on how its money is being spent and by whom. For example, it has been noticed that a small clutch of Indian firms receive a disproportionately large number of loC projects — but there is little that New Delhi can do about it. There have also been reports that recipient nations often prepare inflated project billings. But because there is little monitoring from the donor Government, Indian taxpayer money is used to line the pockets of some corrupt African bureaucrats and unscrupulous Indian businessmen. Similarly, during the bidding process for loC contracts, the focus is on getting the cheapest deal. This often means a compromise on quality, which then hurts India's reputation.
New Delhi and its envoys in African capitals are aware of these problems and, in some cases, steps have been taken to fix the system. A good example of this is the Techno-Economic Approach for Africa-India Movement, popularly known as Team 9. Today, this initiative is considered to have redefined India's relationship with the eight Francophone countries of west Africa — Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote D'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Senegal. Yet only a decade ago, Team 9 was an entirely discredited initiative, held hostage by vested interests in Africa and India. However, in 2004-2005 when India's campaign for a permanent seat at the UN gained steam, the MEA worked with its African partners to revamp the project in a mutually beneficial manner.