Navya Beri
Africa-Press – South-Sudan. Africa has become the second-largest recipient of credit from India as the country is making efforts to catch up with China in growing its impact in the resource-rich continent, as per a new report.
42 African nations have till now received about $32 billion or 38% of all credit extended by India in the last decade, just a few percentage points below its neighbours, Harsha Bangari, the managing director of India’s Export-Import Bank said as per a Bloomberg report.
Bangari further said that the funding is an instrument of India’s “economic diplomacy.” She then added that India has also opened up 195 project-based lines of credit worth about $12 billion across Africa, which is three times the number it has in its own region in the last decade.
“Africa has made good use of credit lines,” extended for projects that include health care, infrastructure, agriculture and irrigation and India is seeing a steady increase in demand, she said.
India, despite its recent efforts to engage with nations in Africa, the world’s second-largest continent, has lagged behind its bigger and wealthier neighbours.
While China’s loans to Africa have plunged since 2016, overall in the 10 years to 2020, it promised $134.6 billion to African nations, as per data from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. That’s almost 11 times more than what India has offered, according to Bloomberg reports.
Indian government’s efforts to push for deeper ties with Africa
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has pushed for more significant engagement with the world’s second-largest continent, Africa, encouraging both economic and diplomatic ties.
India is looking at the opportunity to expand deeper into the continent as Africa is currently dealing with the economic fallout of the Covid pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In the last nine years, 18 of the 25 new Indian embassies or consulates were in Africa. In February, India hosted 48 African countries at the Voice of Global South summit.
The Indian Prime Minister has also been advocating the country as a representative of the Global South and employing platforms like its presidency of the Group of 20 nations to draw attention to the debt crises in developing economies.
“We are trying to think 25 years from now,” India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in a speech on June 28.
“And ask ourselves where are we likely to be in 2047 and what should we be doing now to prepare for it,” he said.
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