India and Africa: From Political Alliance to Economic Partnership

Abstract

Contemporary political economy, driven by the juggernaut of economic and technological globalisation, has thrown out new opportunities and new challenges for every region of the world. However, despite the noticeable rise of a group of emerging powers in the past decade, mainstream political-economic analysis has been slow to take note of the continually evolving international or regional relationships that do not include the industrialised North. In particular, the rapid economic rise of China and India, with their enormous markets and their phenomenally growing appetite for mineral resources, has made it impossible to ignore their impact on the shifting economic geography and the international political economy. This paper picks one such strand in contemporary international political economy to firstly provide a broad overview of the ongoing interactions and considerable overlaps in the historical, political and economic experiences of India and the African nations. Secondly, it discusses some of the contemporary processes and agents of change affecting the Indo-Africa relationship.

Notes

See Tables 1, 2, & 4 in Naidu (2008).

For a great explanation and description of the integrative and connected nature of world history, albeit from an Indian historical perspective, see Subrahmanyam (2005a, 2005b).

Along with South Africa, the other states that participated in this process were Australia, India, Kenya, Mauritius, Oman, and Singapore. These were subsequently referred to as ‘the core group’ or M7 (DFA, 2004).

IOR-ARC members comprise Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Oman, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. China, Egypt, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom are dialogue partners.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Meenal Shrivastava

*Associate Professor and Coordinator, Political Economy and Global Studies, Athabasca University, Edmonton, Canada. Email: [email protected]