By IANS,
New Delhi : The curtains came down on a two-day conference Friday, with Indian and African experts pushing for more innovative methods for accelerating India-Africa engagement and developing a wide-ranging strategic dialogue to jointly combat terrorism and piracy.
“The relationship between India and Africa should be as comprehensive as possible. It is long-term, enduring and mutually advantageous,” Vivek Katju, former secretary in the external affairs ministry, said at the closing session.
Katju, who was closely involved with drafting documents for the second Africa-India summit, stressed the need for innovations that enables the people of India and Africa to thrive in “post-modern, post-industrial societies”.
He also pushed for a wide-ranging strategic dialogue between India and Africa to jointly deal with conventional and non-conventional security challenges ranging from terrorism and piracy to the challenges of food security and energy security.
The conference was organised by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), a premier defence ministry-funded think tank, and was aimed at firming up a road-map for accelerating this crucial engagement between India and Africa, two of the fast growing regions of the world.
When Abednego Adho Ekoko, professor of history at Nigeria’s Delta State University, pointed out that India was “a bit shy” in taking the lead in encouraging the democratic transformation in Africa, Katju said that this attitude emanated from India’s belief that prescriptive models don’t work.
“We are very shy when it comes to suggesting a political model or prescriptive solution. We will like democracies to flourish, but we are terribly reluctant to suggest it to other nations,” said Katju.
Admitting that Africa has “leadership problems,” Ekoko stressed that India’s pluralistic society was a model for Africa. “If a billion people can live together with all that diversity, why can’t Africa?” he said.
Stressing on the need to enlarge the ambit of strategic dialogue, Prof Paul Musili Wambua of University of Nairobi School of Law focused on the need to evolve a long-term approach to tackle problems like drug-trafficking.
Emphasising on the ideals of equality and solidarity that mark India-Africa relationship, H.H.S. Viswanathan, a former ambassador to Nigeria, underlined the need to take this vibrant partnership forward by leveraging the demographic dividend as Africa has an overwhelmingly young population.
He also spoke about the need to leverage the growth story of India and resurgence of Africa towards maximising win-win opportunities.
India held its second summit with the emerging continent in Addis Ababa May 24-25 this year at which it unveiled $5.7 billion line of credit (soft loans) for a raft of developmental projects and setting up of over 80 training institutes across Africa.
The summit highlighted New Delhi’s emphasis on human resource development and capacity building as key features of India’s engagement with Africa.