India in Africa: Economic and Strategic Engagements

For decades, India’s relationship with Africa was driven largely by solidarity, shared anti-colonial history, and the politics of the Non-Aligned Movement. Today, that relationship has transformed into one of the most consequential economic and strategic partnerships of the Global South. Bilateral trade has crossed the $90 billion mark, Indian companies have invested tens of billions of dollars across the continent, and high-level summitry has institutionalised the engagement. Understanding how this partnership evolved, and where it is headed, offers a window into how a rising power builds influence not through coercion, but through development cooperation, trade, and capacity building.

From historical ties to a modern partnership 🔗

The connection between India and Africa is not new. Contacts date back to ancient times through Indian Ocean maritime trade, where the monsoon wind system enabled predictable navigation between western Indian ports and the East African Swahili coast. This ancient commercial bridge created a large and enduring Indian diaspora in countries like South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, and Mauritius.

The political dimension deepened during the colonial era. The bond with South Africa, in particular, traces back to Mahatma Gandhi’s launch of the Satyagraha movement there in 1893. After independence, India became a vocal champion of African decolonisation and a leading critic of apartheid. This legacy of solidarity is the foundation on which today’s economic engagement rests, giving India a degree of trust and goodwill that purely transactional partners often lack.

A shift in approach after 2014 🔗

The character of the relationship changed significantly in the last decade. From the mid-2010s, India expanded its engagement to secure shipping lanes linking it to global markets and to position itself as a regional security provider. This shift accelerated under Prime Minister Modi, with greater emphasis on proactive diplomacy, high-level engagement, and stronger trade and infrastructure links. The relationship moved from a post-colonial, non-aligned posture to a more assertive and economically grounded partnership.

The India-Africa Forum Summit: an institutional anchor 🔗

The single most important platform for this engagement is the India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS). It is the apex institutional mechanism for India’s engagement with Africa, established in 2008, and it covers the full range of cooperation across political, security, economic, trade, developmental, cultural, and people-to-people domains. The summit brings India together with the African Union, individual African countries, and regional economic communities, treating the continent as a collective partner rather than a series of isolated bilateral relationships.

Three summits have been held so far, each progressively raising the scale of commitment:

The three summits and their pledges 🔗

IAFS-I (2008, New Delhi): The inaugural summit set the template. India announced the Duty Free Tariff Preference (DFTP) scheme, granting duty-free and preferential market access on 98.2 percent of its tariff lines to products from eligible African least developed countries. This unilateral measure was designed to help African economies integrate into global value chains.

IAFS-II (2011, Addis Ababa): Held in Africa for the first time, this summit saw India announce strengthened financial support through Lines of Credit of $5 billion over three years, alongside the adoption of the Addis Ababa Declaration as a joint political statement.

IAFS-III (2015, New Delhi): The largest summit yet, attended by a vast number of African delegations, marked a high point in development cooperation. India unveiled $10 billion in additional Lines of Credit and $600 million in grant assistance over five years. This grant included an India-Africa Development Fund of $100 million and an India-Africa Health Fund of $10 million, plus 50,000 scholarships for African students in India and support for expanding the Pan-African e-Network.

The IAFS-III also produced the Delhi Declaration 2015, which aligned India’s growth story with Africa’s Agenda 2063 to spur mutual resurgence, placing development cooperation at the very heart of the partnership.

The economic engagement: trade, credit, and investment 🔗

The numbers tell a story of rapid expansion. India-Africa bilateral trade rose 112% over two decades to reach $89 billion in 2025, nearly double the $45 billion recorded in 2008. In the 2025-26 financial year, this figure climbed further to $93.69 billion, a growth of 14.39 per cent over the previous year, with Indian exports at $45.42 billion and imports at $48.27 billion. This makes India one of Africa’s largest trading partners, ranking alongside China, the European Union, and the UAE.

Lines of Credit as the financing tool 🔗

A defining feature of India’s economic diplomacy is its reliance on concessional Lines of Credit (LoCs) rather than commercial lending. These are typically extended through the EXIM Bank on transparent terms. India has extended 196 Lines of Credit worth over $12 billion to 42 African countries, supporting projects in power, water, agriculture, transport, and digital connectivity. India is now the second-largest lender in Africa, after China.

This financing model distinguishes India from its largest competitor. As observers note, China follows a state-driven, infrastructure-led model while India follows a demand-driven, partnership-based approach focusing on local needs, providing credit on concessional and transparent terms rather than large project-tied loans.

Investment and the sectors that matter 🔗

India’s cumulative investments in Africa amount to roughly $75 billion, which Indian public and private sectors aim to double by 2030. The trade basket has diversified well beyond raw commodities. India’s exports include pharmaceuticals, automobiles, engineering goods, and chemicals, while imports are dominated by gold, coal, copper, manganese ore, and other minerals essential for manufacturing and renewable energy.

Looking ahead, both sides have identified a clear set of priority sectors. Commerce officials have flagged agriculture and food processing, digital public infrastructure, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, critical minerals, electric mobility, manufacturing, defence production, and emerging technologies as key areas for future collaboration. Critical minerals are especially significant, as they feed directly into India’s manufacturing ambitions and clean energy transition.

Economic diplomacy and the Make in India link 🔗

The Modi government’s economic diplomacy has tied the Africa partnership closely to domestic flagship programmes, particularly Make in India. The logic is one of mutual reinforcement. Africa offers India access to critical raw materials, a fast-growing consumer market, and partners for joint manufacturing, while India offers affordable technology, skills training, and concessional finance.

A central plank of this approach is moving up the value chain. Rather than remaining locked in a colonial-era pattern of exchanging raw materials for finished goods, Indian policymakers have called for moving beyond raw material trade towards higher-value products and technology-driven cooperation. The vision is to align standards and customs procedures so that goods can flow more easily and businesses on both sides can integrate into shared supply chains.

Capacity building and human capital 🔗

Where India arguably holds its strongest advantage is in human resource development. Through programmes like the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) and the Pan-African e-Network, more than 40,000 Africans have been trained, many of whom now serve as ministers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs, forming an enduring human bridge between the two regions. The opening of an IIT campus in Zanzibar in 2023, India’s first overseas IIT, symbolises this shift toward co-creation in higher education.

This focus on people over pure infrastructure is a deliberate distinction. India focuses more on human development and institutional capacity-building, while China focuses more on infrastructure financing and strategic capital investments. This soft-power approach generates goodwill that purely financial relationships cannot easily replicate.

The strategic dimension 🔗

Beyond commerce, Africa occupies a critical place in India’s strategic calculations, especially across the Indian Ocean Region. The continent’s eastern seaboard sits astride the sea lanes that carry much of India’s energy imports and trade.

Maritime security and the Indian Ocean 🔗

India has framed its maritime role through the SAGAR doctrine, Security and Growth for All in the Region. A landmark moment came in early 2025 with the Africa-India Key Maritime Engagement (AIKEYME), a multinational naval exercise co-hosted by India and Tanzania involving nine African coastal nations. This positions India as a credible and non-aligned security partner for African states navigating great-power rivalry. India also remains a major troop contributor to UN peacekeeping missions across the continent, reinforcing its credentials as a responsible security provider.

Competition and the contest for influence 🔗

India’s deepening engagement unfolds against intensifying global competition. China’s scale dwarfs every rival; its bilateral trade with Africa surpassed $295 billion in 2024, greater than the combined India, US, and Japan trade with the continent. India also competes with the European Union, Japan’s TICAD, and other partners running their own “Africa+1” summits.

This competition exposes real weaknesses. Analysts warn that India risks being viewed as an episodic rather than strategic partner, citing delayed project execution, financing bottlenecks, and limited private-sector investment compared to China. Converting summit pledges into delivered projects on time remains the central challenge.

The road ahead: IAFS-IV and a renewed framework 🔗

After a gap of more than a decade, the Fourth India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS-IV) is being convened in New Delhi under the theme “IA SPIRIT”: India Africa Strategic Partnership for Innovation, Resilience, and Inclusive Transformation. Its return reflects India’s effort to shore up ties with its traditional partners in the Global South amid a fracturing international order.

The summit is widely seen as a credibility test. The opportunity is enormous, particularly with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) unlocking access to 1.7 billion consumers and an estimated $6.7 trillion in combined spending power by 2030. The task for India is to treat Africa as a meaningful economic bloc, fulfil past commitments with implementable timelines, and transform a periodic summit into a sustained strategic engagement framework.

What do you think? Does India’s emphasis on capacity building and concessional credit offer a genuinely more equitable model of partnership than the infrastructure-and-loans approach of larger powers, or does it simply mask the same competition for resources and influence? And as the Global South grows in collective weight, can the India-Africa partnership become a true pillar of a multipolar world, or will it remain limited by India’s difficulties in delivering on its promises?

References

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