What India's partnership with the AU means for Africa
IN a landmark visit to India between the current chairman of the African Union (AU), who is also the President of Angola, João Lourenço, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, one key message came out from the trip: 'Development without dependency'.
Consistent with Modi's message of 'cooperation without conditions', he elucidated how, in the name of development partnerships, nations were forced into dependence partnerships, which gave rise to colonial and imperial rule and global power blocks.
Now what does this mean for the 54 countries in the African Union and Angola, which is the second largest supplier of oil and the current AU chair?
Of course, India's defining watershed moment was the Presidency of the G20 under Modi, where he advocated and secured permanent membership of the AU in the G20, which was a pivotal moment for the India-Africa relationship.
The question that many pundits have been asking is, how this 'partnership of equals' between Africa and India would play out, especially in the mid of the turbulent geo-political trade wars between China and the United States, which have exposed how countries in the Global South are merely spectators in the global trade eco-system.
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