India-Africa News and Discussion

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Rye
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India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by Rye »

Restarting the missing India-Africa thread:

Op-ed on Africa

Two men and a continent
-----------------

Link to African Studies Journal back issues.

Added to promote some awareness about Africa.
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Post by RayC »

Chatham House, 7 Apr 08: India's Engagement with the African Indian Ocean Rim States
In recent years India has strengthened its involvement in the African Indian Ocean Rim considerably. This shift in policy comes in part because of India's desire to compete with China's growing influence in the region. The Indian Ocean has immense significance to India's development. India's strategy is deepening not only commercially but due to concerns over its security and hegemony in the region, which are underpinned by India's 2004 maritime doctrine.

During the mid-1990s Indian foreign policy was largely introspective and concerned with consolidating its position as the regional power. Despite being a member of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation, there was little enthusiasm for the association and it produced few tangible results. The emergence of trilateral developmental initiative between India, Brazil

and South Africa clearly reflected India's priority of positioning itself as a major developmental power.

The growing importance of the African Indian Ocean Rim to India is evidenced by increasing bilateral and trilateral efforts and improved relations, notably with Mauritius, the Seychelles, Madagascar and coastal states such as Mozambique, Kenya and Tanzania. India's most formidable economic and commercial partnership in the African Indian Ocean is with Mauritius.....
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publicat ... ca0408.pdf
The first ever India-Africa Forum Summit in New Delhi on April 8-9 brings together top functionaries and heads of governments of 14 African countries with their Indian counterparts to raise an old friendship to a new level. The summit is being held at a plastic juncture in world politics when the old order of unipolarity is giving way to a new distribution of power spread out more evenly across Asia, Europe and North America.

New Delhi has a longstanding programme called Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) through which thousands of nominees from African countries have been imparted training in defence preparedness, agriculture, small scale industries, entrepreneurship, engineering, telecommunications and engineering. ITEC has provided valuable support to the Afro-Asian Rural Reconstruction Organisation and inaugurated cooperation with regional African groups like the Southern African Development Community. The summit meeting on April 8-9 should strengthen this pillar of India-Africa partnership to neutralise fears that New Delhi is wooing Africa solely for greed of mineral treasures.

By upgrading initiatives like ITEC to the entire member base of the African Union, India can send the message that its intentions in Africa are not exploitative in the typical Western fashion. Indian diplomats are sensitive to the charge that they are courting Africa in order to compete geopolitically with China in an energy hunt. New Delhi has rejected appeals to team up with European and North American companies in Africa.
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.p ... &id=198462
Is India capable of seizing the opportunity?
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Post by Rye »

webkenya seems to be a news aggregator site for Kenya

http://www.webkenya.com/news.php


Following is from The Standard

http://www.eastandard.net/news/?id=1143984645&cid=4
News Aggregator for many Kenyan Newspapers.

Kibaki, Raila still miles apart

Published on April 11, 2008, 12:00 am


By Standard Team

President Kibaki and Prime Minister-designate Raila Odinga, appeared to drift further apart even as African envoys engaged in shuttle diplomacy to bring the two to talking terms.

And a new bone of contention emerged on Thursday over six key ministries, which ODM says are all headed by ministers from the Mt Kenya region. The chasm between Kibaki and Raila widened when the President insisted that he would not respond to a terse letter ODM wrote to him on April 7, asking for "real" portfolio balance.

The letter also suggested that the President appoints a four-member team from both parties to spearhead the balancing act.
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Post by Omar »

When trade winds smell sweet

[quote]WITH a munificence that accompanies 9% growth, India recently played host to some South African development experts, who were invited to inspect sanitation and low-cost housing. Alas, their experience—of a country where 700m people lack indoor lavatories and half the biggest city's inhabitants live in slums—did not impress. According to one insider, the South Africans laughed all the way back to the rainbow nation.

But a more serious bid to woo African hearts and minds took place this week. Guests at an inaugural Indian-African summit, complete with an exuberant cultural programme (see picture), included many of the continent's bigwigs, from South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, to Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi. Even Uganda, whose expulsion of all Asians in 1972 was a low point for Indian-African ties, was volubly present—in the person of President Yoweri Museveni, who has welcomed Indians back.

Thanks to the trade winds that gust across their common ocean, to the delight of merchants and shark fishermen, Africa and India have enjoyed close relations since time immemorial. Islam intensified the link, as did the Portuguese, who colonised both Goa and Africa's coasts. Starting in 1895, the British shipped thousands of Indians to east Africa to build a railway; they became station-masters, artisans, clerks and shopkeepers. India's biggest diaspora, by some counts, is formed by the 1m or so citizens of South Africa who descend from labourers brought over in the 19th century.

But it is not the past which haunts Indian strategists. It is a future dominated, many fear, by competition with India's vast, commodity-hungry and increasingly Afrophile neighbour, China. A decade ago India's two-way trade with Africa was worth more than China's. In recent years, partly thanks to investments in Nigerian oil, the Indian total has surged, to around $25 billion last year. But China's, now topping $55 billion, has grown even faster.

China and India both want access to African natural resources, and both see Africa as an outlet for their manufactures. Of the Asian giants, China's diplomatic profile in Africa is higher, after a series of tours by President Hu Jintao. But India wants to catch up. For example, it is keen to sell Africa its high-tech products, particularly in cheap telephony and mobile internet services. One of the success stories on show in Delhi this week was India's donation to several African countries of tele-education and tele-medical care systems, as well as video-conferencing facilities.

Given that their needs overlap so clearly with China's, the Indians are no less anxious than the Chinese to impress the Africans with their hospitality and charm. Although Indians hate direct comparisons, China hosted an even bigger gathering for African leaders in 2006. (For good measure, a Japanese-African summit will be held in Yokohama in May.)

India is no more squeamish than China about dallying with dictators. It happily does deals with the tyrants of Sudan; one recent contract was for a $200m pipeline linking Khartoum to Port Sudan. Like China, India has refrained from criticising misrule in Zimbabwe.

But India also does good in Africa: it has helped out many UN missions there, with some 9,000 blue helmets now in the field. Over the past five years it has offered lines of concessionary credit to Africa worth $2.5 billion. Now it is talking about a $10 billion investment fund for the continent.

So far India has escaped the abuse heaped on the Chinese for their dealings in the worst-governed bits of Africa. The main reason is that, hitherto, India's transactions have been on a more modest scale. But the free pass may not be valid for long. The human-rights advocates who berate China for complicity in the plight of Sudan's Darfur region are already beginning to turn their attention to India.

In the field of commerce a different set of factors comes into play. When Indian firms have competed in Africa with China's much bigger corporations, they have often lost out. In 2004 India's oil and gas corporation, ONGC, bid $310m for an Angolan oil block; its Chinese rival offered $725m. To hold its own in Nigeria—which accounts for 20% of India's crude-oil imports—ONGC formed an alliance with a Dutch-based compatriot, Mittal Energy.

Yet Indian firms in Africa also have advantages, such as the continent's ethnic Indians, who form a useful bridge. Take east Africa's best-known industrialist, Manu Chandaria, who was born in Kenya nearly 80 years ago to Gujarati parents. “Indians have been dealing with Africa for centuries, and we are here to stay,â€
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Post by Gerard »

ramana
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Post by ramana »

One thing to remember is that even before British India, it was India that was the dominant economic force in East Africa. and we all know the role that Indians played in British East africa.

Robert Kaplan is right that new India is asserting its historical role.
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Post by putnanja »

ramana
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Post by ramana »

Swapan Dasgupta in Telegraph, 18 April 2008

[quote]
OUTPOSTS OF TYRANNY
- It is time Africa stopped blaming others for its misfortunes
Swapan Dasgupta


Robert Mugabe during an election rally in Harare, March 2008
History has been unkind to Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of British India. Arguably the most glamorous and image- conscious of the Men Who Ruled India — the “superiorâ€
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Post by Keshav »

ramana wrote:Never mind the different aesthetic trajectory of post-Independence development, India is seen to be something that the British Empire got right. For the past 60 years, India has adhered to Westminster-style democracy, professed the rule of law and, with many hiccups along the way, made the transition from extreme backwardness to patchy modernity.
I never liked this idea. Its as if the West will only recognize us if we are Westernized. We get a pat on the back for being modernized but insomuch as we look and talk like them.

Indians are only good because they were competent enough to follow the British, not because of an indigenous political originality or acumen. Not that democracy is a bad thing, by the way.
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Post by satya »

Zimbawe updates
Zimbabwe: At a summit of the United Nations and African Union today, British Prime Minister Brown said, "No one thinks, having seen the results of polling stations, that President Mugabe has won." Zimbabwe Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa responded, "It is clear from correspondence that Tsvangirai along with Brown are seeking regime change in Zimbabwe, and on the part of Tsvangirai, this is treasonous. There is no doubting the consequences for acting in a treasonous manner."



Chinamasa also reminded Brown that Zimbabwe is not a British colony. The next intimidation step should be to arrest Tsvangirai, if the government believes its own propaganda. After the recounts and the run-off election, if it occurs, Mugabe and his military backers will remain in control. The opposition is too poor to afford protests and defend its human rights. This is a study in democracy.



Zimbabwean opposition leader Tsvangirai said that South African President Thabo Mbeki should refrain from mediating between the opposition party and Zimbabwean President Mugabe's party. Tsvangirai also said a war crimes tribunal should be set up to stop the violence, and he added that he has asked Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, chairman of the Southern African Development Community, to start a new mediation effort.



As noted in an earlier report, no African mediator will favor unseating a sitting member of the President’s club.


China-Zimbabwe: A Chinese ship allegedly carrying armaments for the Zimbabwean army was cleared to dock in Durban, according to South African news reports. The ship, owned by Chinese Ocean Shipping Company, has been held in an outer anchorage since 14 April, a spokesman for a police explosives unit said.



A captain on the Chinese ship denied it contained "dangerous cargo." He did not deny he carried cargo for the Zimbabwe army, however. The Chinese have invested extensively in Zimbabwe’s mineral resources under favorable conditions extended by the Mugabe governments and may be expected to act to protect their interests. They do not mind bad press from their associations with authoritarian regimes anywhere as long as their investments are protected.
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Post by ramana »

As far as I know, India (GOI) has spent a lot of money and dipolmatic capital in the ANC. What is surprising is Mandela and his minions have turned out to be ahsan faramosh or India couldnt cash in on her support in the bad years. MEA should think about it.
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Post by Gerard »

Is it that Brazil and South Africa see India as a competitor rather than a partner?
Is the Indian government to blame? Is it seen as weak and vacillating?
Is it all due to a particular media image of India that they have been exposed to?
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Post by satya »

The new scramble for Africa begins

[quote]Fifty years ago the decolonisation of Africa began. The next half-century may see the continent recolonised. But the new imperialism will be less benign. Great powers aren't interested in administering wild places any more, still less in settling them: just raping them. Black gangster governments sponsored by self-interested Asian or Western powers could become the central story in 21st-century African history.
Nature abhors a vacuum. [/size]Take Zimbabwe. In the Western news media the clichés about Robert Mugabe's “despotismâ€
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Post by Rye »

The African nations should be given knowledge to empower themselves, which appears to be the policy of the GoI, going by the recent news from the Indo-African Summit.

In the western mindset, this will create more competitors, but the west cannot just pretend that "we sink or swim together" is just a slogan to be conveniently ignored whenever they feel the urge to loot some natural resource without adequate compensation. They write all the rule books before "ending colonization", and the keep the people too illiterate (the only thing the "impure natives" are taught is western religion to colonize future contacts from the ground up).

One view is that it is vital to preserve african heritage and culture, most of which (especially music) is phenomenal. Once one hears Oliver Mtukudzi or Manu Dibango, one understands who gave the world the gift of the groove.
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Post by Nayak »

South Africa Xenophobia Violence Backfires

[quote]
“Last year, in Uganda when an Indian man was killed during street protests and the media wrongly reported that it was a racial crime, our commissioner in India sent a message to Uganda saying, 'Remember there are over 100,000 Ugandans in India.' She didn't need to say more. The point was made clear,â€
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Post by Nayak »

MTN should look west

[quote]
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After Bharti, MTN might well do better to cast its eyes westwards
JUDGING by Indian cellphone giant’s Bharti Airtel’s post-discussions statement about its exploratory talks with MTN, the South African company was right to get out.

Clearly, what happened was that Bharti constructed a takeover of MTN, but after its board meeting last week MTN came back, turned the idea on its head and suggested taking over Bharti instead.

Anyway, clearly Bharti was miffed at the notion, and called off the talks in a huff.

Why MTN executives decided to turn the tables on Bharti is hard to know for sure, but presumably the negotiators got a sense of what the Indian company really wanted: an Indian national champion rather than a business deal.

Perhaps they then decided to trigger closure by proposing something that they knew Bharti would not like.

It’s clear that the talks did show promise though.

Apparently, an in principle agreement was reached on May 16 and a term sheet initialled by the two lead bankers for the companies, and this was presented to the MTN board on May 21.

Bharti even offered MTN CEO Phuthuma Nhleko the same position in the new company, which was generous.

Bharti’s offer price for MTN shares was agreed on and frozen at the start of talks.

“There was no further discussion on the share price of MTN, at any point,â€
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Post by Rye »

An Indian company operating MTN would be a great boon for India. Both South Africa and Namibia could use an internet revolution -- Namibia more than South Africa (easier also, since Namibia has fewer people and is more politically stable...at least as long as Sam Nujoma lives. India should try to help them create a stable democracy).
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Post by Rye »

Music from Sierra Leone (Sierra Leone Music TV):

http://www.slmtv.com/web/slmtv_videos.asp

Lot of music videos of bands from Sierra Leone.

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/a ... hp?ID=2191

Music from Ghana.
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Post by Sanjay M »

shyam
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Post by shyam »

Does GoI have a process to ensure that scamsters won't re-export rice exported Afric to elsewhere?
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by ramana »

X-posted..
Acharya wrote:

India and the new scramble for Africa

http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/14/stories ... 471100.htm
Jorge Heine

Africa’s enormous natural resources, many of them lying fallow because of economic mismanagement or outright civil wars, are precisely what India needs.

Gandhiji, who knew Africa well, once said, “commerce between India and Africa will be of ideas and services, not of manufactured goods against raw materials after the fashion of the western exploiter.” The Mahatma was prescient only to some extent: though services and ideas play a role in the burgeoning Indo-African links, raw materials and industrial products still predominate.

As Africa enters into its fifth consecutive year of growth, projected at 6.2 per cent in 2008 (up from 5.8 per cent in 2007), it has become, as the OECD’s Javier Santiso has put it, “the new frontier of emerging markets.” South Africa, Botswana, Ghana and Kenya are at the forefront of an “African Renaissance” that South African President Thabo Mbeki has been preaching about since 1998, but that is only now starting to materialise. The number of companies listed in stock exchanges in Sub-Saharan Africa has gone up from 66 in 2000 to 522 in 2007, and even hedge funds and private equity managers are moving in. The investment rate, at 20 per cent of GDP, is still too low, and foreign debt, at $250 billion, remains a burden, but by and large Africa’s economic outlook is much better than it was a few years ago.
India’s presence

India’s growing presence in Africa is best epitomised by events in the Zambian copper belt. Once a leading copper producer, Zambia nationalised its copper mines in the late 60s, shortly before Chile did in 1971. Yet, as opposed to Chile, whose state-owned CODELCO is today’s the world’s leading copper company, Zambia ran its mines into the ground. In despair, 30 years later the Zambian government invited the former owners, Anglo American PLC, the South African mining giant, to move in again, which it did, buying up their former properties for a song. Yet even fabled Anglo was unable to deal with the mess, and abandoned Konkola, the jewel in the crown of the Zambian mines, and other properties a few years later.

Enter Vedanta Resources, an FTSE 100 Indian metals and mining group, which, with impeccable timing, bought 51 per cent of Konkola Copper Mines in 2004 (recently upgraded to 79 per cent) and has them now up and running; a major expansion, to be ready by 2010, should bring up production to 500,000 tons of finished copper. An Indian company stepped in where neither Anglo nor CODELCO, which was also offered Konkola, dared to tread. With the price of copper at four dollars a pound, four times what it was four years ago, in a number of boardrooms of mining companies around the world the question of “who lost Zambia?” must be resonating. (Vedanta also recently bought ASARCO, the third largest copper producer in the United States for $2.6 billion in cash.)

Welcome to the brave new world of India in Africa, where the captains of Indian industry, like Anil Agarwal of Vedanta (who boasts he is now “26 per cent of Zambia’s GDP”) but also Ratan Tata of the Tata Group, Onkar Kanwar of Apollo Tyres and many others have moved in with a vengeance. Tata Steel has a $1.5 billion joint venture in an iron project in Cote d’Ivoire, and Tanzania has become a magnet for Indian companies, attracting some $825 million in investment since 1990. These companies are making up for time lost until the early 90s, when Africa’s economic difficulties and India’s inward-oriented development had kept them apart. Trade between India and Africa has gone from $961 million in 1991 to $30 billion in 2006-2007. The continent’s fastest growing region is East Africa, with the oldest links with India, and the largest Indian-origin communities.

As a recent, special issue of the South African Journal of International Affairs (vol. 14, # 2; full disclosure: I am on their Editorial Advisory Board) on the subject shows, both Africa and India have much to gain from all this. India’s high growth rate, averaging eight per cent for the past four years, in what is now a trillion-dollar economy, is gobbling up all the raw materials it can get, be they iron, copper, gold or oil. Africa’s enormous natural resources, many of them lying fallow because of economic mismanagement or outright civil wars, are precisely what India needs.

The current upsurge in commodity prices, driven by Chinese and Indian demand, has helped both Africa and Latin America — and to look at the per capita oil, copper and iron consumption in the two Asian giants and compare it to the one in Europe or North America is to realise for how long this can go on.

China, as elsewhere in the world, has gained advantage over India, securing oil rights in Nigeria, Angola, and , most controversially, in Sudan, among other countries. China’s trade with Africa in 2007 was $55 billion (up from $10 billion in 2000) and according to some, may have contributed as much as 20 per cent of Africa’s economic growth in 2007. The Chinese government would like it to reach $100 billion in 2010, thus becoming Africa’s main economic partner. In 2006, the China-Africa Summit in Beijing gathered 48 of the 53 African heads of state. India hosted a similar, albeit smaller, summit with African heads of state in New Delhi this past April.

These new links are not only about trade, but also about cooperation. And in both fields, the action is in the South. A measure of how much out of the loop Northern countries are in this can be gauged from the fact that whereas all of U.S. international cooperation for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2007 amounted to $1.6 billion (of which $600 million went to Colombia), this was a mere one fifth of the $8.8 billion budgeted by Venezuela in international aid for the region. China has committed to a $5 billion Africa Development Fund. To continue to haggle for the OECD countries to step up to the plate and come up with the 0.7 per cent of GDP in international cooperation to which they committed long ago but have failed to deliver is not just futile, but irrelevant.

New Delhi is not quite in Venezuela’s or China’s category in its Africa programmes, but it is moving in the right direction. In addition to its flagship, $200 million Nepad project to provide digital connectivity throughout the African continent by means of a Pan-African satellite and fibre-optics network, India is setting up cooperation programmes in Ethiopia and Botswana to improve agricultural productivity, in Ghana in poverty alleviation, in Benin, Senegal and elsewhere.

One of the most innovative approaches is coming out of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) initiative, whose Third Summit is to take place next October in New Delhi. IBSA has set up its own cooperation fund, with projects in Equatorial Guinea and in Haiti leading the way. India, a somewhat reluctant partner, has started to realise the enormous potential IBSA entails, as India, while taking on the new responsibilities its new regional and, indeed, global, role implies, can also build on its foreign policy trajectory as founding member and leader of the NAM, an entity originally based on Afro-Asian solidarity.
Advantage Africa

Yet, contrary to what some might surmise from this new version of the “scramble for Africa” among the two Asian giants, if African countries play their cards right, they have much to gain. Chinese and Indian companies are more willing to invest in infrastructure and in the “downstream” facilities needed to bring products to port than western ones.

South Africa, where Gandhi cut his political teeth from 1893 on, has been at the forefront of African ties with India, as was underscored by the recent visit to New Delhi of ANC chairman Jacob Zuma, whom many consider to be Thabo Mbeki’s most likely successor. South Africa’s exports to India have grown from a few hundred million dollars in the early 90s to $2.6 billion in 2006, much of it driven by gold, but also by other products.

As the demand for India increases from around the world, there is a great temptation for New Delhi to focus exclusively on the Big Powers and shed its old Third World commitments as unnecessary ballast. That would be a mistake. As the considerable growth in trade and investment flows not only with Africa but also with Latin America shows, India has enormous opportunities in both of those continents. They provide many of the commodities India needs, plus ready markets for Indian products. Ideas and services are key in the Knowledge Society into which the Third Industrial Revolution has propelled us, and of which India has made so much so far. Yet, they still need to be under-girded by the material base provided by natural resources and manufactured products.

(Jorge Heine is CIGI Professor of Global Governance at Wilfrid Laurier University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ontario. He serves currently as Vice-President of the International Political Science Association.).

can we have links on some of the people mentioned here please? For example Jacob Zuma. And the leaders and second tier of the countries mentioned here in- SA, Zambia, Botswana, Gambia etc.
Thanks,
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by Gerard »

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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by Ameet »

Indians coming home to Africa

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fo ... +(F)&sid=1

from the article, "These unsung returnees are ahead of all the new buzz about investing in Africa, a solid pocket of resistance to the Chinese surge."
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by bhavin »

Ameet wrote:Indians coming home to Africa

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fo ... +(F)&sid=1

from the article, "These unsung returnees are ahead of all the new buzz about investing in Africa, a solid pocket of resistance to the Chinese surge."
Here is the corrected url for the article.

Indians coming home to Africa
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by ramana »

We need dedicated thread watchers who can collect and post the info relevant to that thread. They can evolve into SME of those threads. Any takers for this thread?
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by Avinash R »

Suicide attack at Algerian police academy kills 43
Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 21 minutes ago

ALGIERS, Algeria - A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-rigged car into a police academy as applicants lined up to register for classes, killing at least 43 people, Algeria's Interior Ministry said. It was one of the deadliest attacks in recent years in the North African country.


The ministry said in a statement that the toll of 43 dead and 38 injured was a "preliminary estimate" for the attack early Tuesday in the Les Issers district of Boumerdes, some 35 miles east of the capital, Algiers.

Witnesses said all roads within two miles of Les Issers were blocked and cell phone networks were scrambled as police closed off the area.

A security official at the school told The Associated Press that the attack occurred as young applicants were in line, waiting to register at the local police academy.

"It's a bloodbath," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

He said the local police station, known as the gendarmerie, was vulnerable because of the crowd of applicants at its gate.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but the country's al-Qaida affiliate has said it was behind a series of bombings in the past 18 months.

Tuesday's attack appeared to be one of the largest — if not the largest — in years. In December, a double suicide bombing in Algiers killed 41 people, including 17 U.N. workers. In April 2007, coordinated suicide strikes against the main government offices in central Algiers and a police station killed 33.

Tuesday's bombing came two days after a militant ambush in Skirda, about 300 miles east of Algiers, apparently targeted the military commander of the region and his police escort. Twelve people died in the Sunday attack, according to the Al Watan newspaper and several other dailies. Authorities have not commented on the case.

The reports said suspected Islamic militants detonated road mines, then opened fire on the convoy. They beheaded the victims and stole their uniforms along with a dozen automatic rifles.

In a similar attack three days earlier, militants killed the military chief for the Jijel area, also east of Algiers, local media reported.

Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, formerly known as the GSPC, grew out of an insurgency in the 1990s, which left as many as 200,000 dead.

Violence strongly diminished in Algeria in the early part of this decade, but attacks increased again after the GSPC affirmed allegiance to al-Qaida in 2006.


Most attacks have targeted the Algerian national security services and military, while a few have struck foreigners.
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by Avinash R »

SA: Indians press for revival of Natal Congress - rediff
September 09, 2008

The demand to revive forums like Natal Indian Congress and South African Indian Congress is increasingly gaining momentum with leaders of various sections of the Indian-origin community joining the fray.

A former black consciousness activist and one of the most respected leaders of the community Bishop Reuben Phillip has praised former activist Fatima Meer for recently demanding the revival of the Natal Indian Congress and the South African Indian Congress.

"I want to express my gratitude to Professor Meer for having the courage to come out in the open to say there's a void in the community because the ruling ANC is currently facing too many challenges," 61-year-old Bishop Phillip, leader of the Anglican Church in KwaZulu-Natal, said.

"I don't think that we should be afraid to do this because there are some issues that are unique to the Indian community and therefore we should get together," Bishop Phillip, whose grand-parents came to South Africa as indentured labourers from the former Madras Presidency in south India, said.

Another former activist Sunny Gurja Singh, who spent 10 years on Robben Island prison for his political activities on behalf of the ANC in the 1960s, told PTI that the Indian-origin community needed a forum to tackle the numerous problems facing the community.

"I also believe that the ANC should have no problems with such an organisation because we will be working to mobilise the community towards taking care of the problems it is facing," he said.
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by NRao »

India needs to support France on this one matter and perhaps even consider occupying north Somalia. This, clearly, is India sphere of influence and India needs to take the lead.

France calls for world action against Somali pirates after troops free 2 hostages

By ELAINE GANLEY | Associated Press Writer
8:18 AM CDT, September 16, 2008
PARIS (AP) _ French troops stormed a yacht hijacked by Somali pirates, killing one, capturing six others and freeing their two French hostages in a raid that France's president said Tuesday was a warning to criminals on the high seas.

President Nicolas Sarkozy urged the world to mobilize against maritime piracy and said the overnight military assault that freed Jean-Yves and Bernadette Delanne — the second such French operation in five months — was a demonstration of France's "unbending determination against piracy."

"The pirates now know that they are taking risks, big risks," Sarkozy said.

The Delanne couple, from French Polynesia, were sailing a friend's boat from Australia to France when they were captured Sept. 2 by pirates lying in wait in the Gulf of Aden.



About 30 French soldiers took part in what Sarkozy called a meticulously planned assault that he ordered Monday night. The hostages were freed in 10 minutes and the soldiers were unhurt, he said.

Sarkozy said he ordered the rescue when it became clear that the pirates planned to take the hostages to Eyl, a Somali zone that serves as a base for numerous pirates.

Freeing them would have been difficult once they got there and "their captivity could have lasted months," Sarkozy said.

High winds deferred the assault for two nights running, he said.

Piracy off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden has "literally exploded" this year, Sarkozy said, adding that Somali pirates are currently holding 150 people and at least 15 ships, mainly in Eyl.

The Gulf of Aden has been the scene of most of the 54 pirate attacks this year off the coast of Somalia. The French president said that some 48,000 ships pass through the gulf annually.

Sarkozy said France will take action in the U.N. Security Council, where it has a permanent seat, to mobilize the international community against "this plague" of piracy in the Gulf of Aden.

"The world cannot accept this. Today, these are no longer isolated cases but a genuine industry of crime. This industry casts doubt on a fundamental freedom: that of movement and of international commerce," said Sarkozy.

He added: "I call on the other countries of the world to assume their responsibilities, as France has done — twice."

Sarkozy said he intends to bring the six pirates — now held on a French frigate — to France. But he left open the possibility that Somalia could keep them, if "we are certain that these pirates will be tried, sentenced and will serve out their punishments."

The body of the slain pirate will be handed over to Somali authorities, Sarkozy added.

France has six other pirates in custody from an April 11 French operation by helicopter-borne troops. that took place after pirates freed the 30-member crew of a pleasure yacht, the Ponant. A US$2 million ransom was apparently paid by the yacht's owner. Some of the money was recovered by French troops.

Sarkozy said a ransom demand was made, but not paid, in the latest case.

On Monday, European Union foreign ministers agreed to set up a special unit to coordinate warship patrols off the coast of Somalia to protect shipping from pirates.

Sarkozy noted that armed pirates hijacked a Hong Kong chemical tanker with 22 crew members in the Gulf of Aden in a fresh attack on Monday.

Sarkozy said pirates also fired rockets in recent days at a French tuna fishing boat that was 750 kilometers (465 miles) off the Somali coast.

___

Associated Press Writers John Leicester and Laurent Pirot contributed to this report.
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

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Centre for Indian Studies in Africa established.

Africa's first Centre for Indian Studies (CISA) was established at the University of the Witwatersrand here with an Indian minister calling for "quality transformation" of the global regime so that countries of the South can take their rightful place in a multipolar society.

"To have all the world's multilateral bodies such as the UN and financial institutions controlled and dominated by 12 per cent of the world's population, is unacceptable," Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said while delivering the keynote address at the official launch of the CISA Tuesday.

"Our countries have changed in a short span of time - 60 years in the case of India and 14 in South Africa - to overcome the denial and discrimination of decades, but there is still a lot of work to be done," he maintained.

CISA, to be headed by Stephen Gelb, will promote teaching and research on India at the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as academic exchanges with Indian institutions and public intellectual activity on India and its relations with Africa.

Reaffirming India's commitment to assist African nations in developing human resource capacity, Sharma said I-Tech scholarships to train people in India had been doubled.

"This is one area which we thought was important because human resource development and education is important to empower people and to ensure that they are full partners in economic development. Even today, about 20,000 students from Africa are studying at institutions in India," the minister pointed out.

Sharma added that an initiative announced by then president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 2004 during a visit to South Africa had delivered results in several areas.

"This was a satellite for Internet connectivity to overcome the digital divide. There are today 31 African institutions that are connected, resulting in a major leap in telemedicine and tele-education by connecting universities and especially hospitals in Africa, which are linked to the super-specialty hospitals in India."

Describing this as "a shining example of India-Africa partnerships", Sharma said he had been "disappointed" to learn that South Africa was not yet part of this project.

Sharma said India was very proud of having achieved in the technological field what Rajiv Gandhi had said in 1985: "He talked of information technology in preparing India for the 21st century.

"Of course, there were few takers and there were many sceptics who believed that that could not happen. But in less than two decades, India has leapfrogged to a leadership situation in information technology. Today 65 percent of the world's share in IT related services is controlled by India."

Addressing a wide range of global challenges from the current food and energy crisis to health pandemics and global warming, Sharma said India was very proud of its achievement in agriculture self-sufficiency: "We are very proud that India feeds its eleven hundred million people, because we knew that there is no country in the world that could feed India."

But at the same time, what India, South Africa and others have to do is to look at the needs of the billions who lived in abject poverty. "It is important to have inclusive and sustainable growth to ensure that the benefits permeate to the poorest of the poor."

Indian High Commissioner to South Africa Rajiv Bhatia, quoting Nelson Mandela's view that "education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world", said at the launch: "We are happy to employ this 'weapon' creatively to deepen India-South Africa relations."

"We are confident that the Centre will become the fulcrum of efforts to deepen knowledge of India in South Africa and of South Africa in India," Bhatia said as he handed over a second tranche of several hundred books to the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA).
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

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India-Africa-network

http://www.apanews.net/apa.php?page=sho ... icle=76709

India launches pan-African electronic network


APA-Victoria (Seychelles) India launches the first section of the pan-African electronic network on Wednesday afternoon, the chairman and managing director of the Indian government-owned Telecommunications Consultants Limited said.

Rakesh Upadhay was speaking on Wednesday at the Indian High Commission in the capital Victoria.

He said the Seychelles is among the first five of 53 African countries who will benefit from the network.

Upadhay said his company has been charged with installing the network which will cost some $125 million.

The first segment is a telemedicine component which will help connect Seychellois medical doctors to their Indian counterparts with specialized hospitals for consultations, he said.

The second part of the network will consist of a secure system which will allow heads of state and government of countries forming part of the African Union to converse among themselves in order to bypass public communication networks, he said.

The third segment will allow students in the Seychelles to follow courses of Indian universities, he added.

He said the ultimate goal is to connect all 53 African countries to a satellite and fibre-optic network.

Upadhay said the idea of setting up the network came from former Indian President Abdul Kalam while he was on a visit to South Africa in 2004.

The agreement for the electronic network was formalized between the Indian government and the African Union in October 2005.
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

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With Indian Air Force helicopter gu- nships killing hundreds of rebels and infantry combat vehicles punching through rebel positions, India's largest-ever deployment of soldiers on foreign soil has taken on a muscular new turn in the heart of Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo's internal conflict - whose resolution is a test case of strong global intervention - has led an Indian brigade under the United Nations mission (known by its French acronym MONUC) to rework its peacekeeping strategy from a velvet glove to an iron fist.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/32/20081004/10 ... ica_1.html
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

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India says it will send warships to the Gulf of Aden to protect its container vessels from pirates operating off the coast of Somalia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7675251.stm
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

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Rebels fire rockets at peacekeepers in Congo
The United Nations says rebels have fired rockets at two vehicles carrying peacekeepers during heavy fighting in Congo. U.N. spokesman Col. Samba Tall says some soldiers were slightly injured and both vehicles were damaged in the attack on Sunday.
Tall did not give the nationalities of the soldiers involved, but the area is patrolled by Indian troops.
UN joins battle with Congo rebels
UN peacekeeping forces are engaged in heavy fighting against rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo... helicopter gunships and armoured units were supporting the Congolese army north of Goma.
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7710467.stm
In a significant hardening of their position, UN peacekeeping troops in Goma have been ordered to fire on any armed groups trying to enter the city.
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by rsingh »

I wish India take lead and finish off these animals disguised as human beings. Pregnant ladies are forced to run by rambos in jeep................how low human being can fall. I ndia has to show leadership and send regiment size troops. Kill anybody with arms. Diplomates will take care of rest and Africa will be thankful for centuries. Do not care about UN mandate blah blah.......otherwise Indian troops will be accused of doing nothing.
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Re: India-Africa News and Discussion

Post by vavinash »

India does not have the balls to start a war when its parliament is attacked and you want them to start a war in africa??
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