By IANS
New Delhi : India is likely to announce duty free import of select items from some African countries at its first-ever summit with 14 African countries in April here.
The April 8 summit will come out with an action plan for reinvigorating India-Africa ties and a political declaration that will encapsulate broad directions of this partnership in the 21st century, a top official source said.
The action plan will include a broad spectrum of areas, including trade, investment, education, agriculture, mining, infrastructure, education and culture.
“We are working on a package of duty concessions that may cover some agricultural items for least developed countries of Africa,” official source said.
Total trade with Africa for 2006-07 was estimated at around $20 billion with exports to Africa growing by more than 180 percent.
The duty-free and quota-free regime for some African countries will be a big step to energise trade ties between India and Africa.
India is leaving no stone unturned to make the upcoming India-Africa forum summit a big success and expects it to be a precursor to a bigger summit with the 53-nation African continent.
Algeria, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Libya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia are among the countries to attend the summit. The participating countries have been chosen by the African Union.
The summit has been structured as a three-tier interaction between senior officials (April 4), foreign ministers (April 7) and 17 heads of states/government of the two sides (April 8) participating in this exercise.
A gala multicultural concert and a multimedia show will kick off the summit that will provide a more contemporary character to their ties.
Although the move appears to have been inspired by a similar summit China held with African states, Indian officials are keen to distinguish their approach, of capacity building and empowerment towards Africa, as different from the trade-driven Chinese approach.
India sees its partnership with Africa as one of empowerment and meeting genuine African needs. Nearly 15,000 African students study in India every year.
“The summit will showcase the brand image of India in Africa. Africa has changed and so has India. The forum will be appropriate to give a new direction to the partnership between the two sides,” said an official.
It will also be attended by heads of sub-regional groupings like the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS).
India’s help in setting up the Pan-Africa e-network that will electronically link 53 countries of Africa and bring them benefits of tele-education and tele-medicine highlights the new thrust of Indian diplomacy in Africa.
Besides, India has given generous lines of credit to assist the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and written off the debt owed by the African countries under the HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) Paris Initiative.
India has also spent more than $1 billion on providing training to more than 1,000 officials from sub-Saharan Africa under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme (ITEC).