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The African Continental Free Trade Area, launched in July, is a landmark achievement, aiming to eliminate tariffs on 90% of products covered by intra-Africa trade and thereby spur entrepreneurial initiative and job creation. It envisages many other gains as well, but the hurdles in their realisation cannot be wished away. An analysis
Courtesy: Gateway House
The recently concluded CII-Exim Bank Conclave on the India-Africa Project Partnership elicited in-depth discussions on how to increase economic cooperation between the two countries. Three themes emerged, the infrastructure deficit continuing to be one of Africa’s greatest preoccupations
Egypt, which is the 2019 chair of the African Union, is critically positioned to exert a geostrategic influence across Africa. In a conversation with Gateway House, Egyptian ambassador to India, Dr Heba Salaheldin Elmarassi, spoke on a wide range of issues that link India and Egypt, including trade, investment and security, North Africa’s political turbulence and the expanding Chinese footprint in the continent
Courtesy: Bharat Shakti
India and Japan, two countries wanting to enhance the quality of their engagement in Africa’s development, have historically taken fundamentally different approaches to the task. But now, both are being guided by geoeconomic imperatives in aligning their strategy in the region— and the Asia Africa Growth Corridor offers many opportunities for synergy at the B2B level
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China’s footprint in the African continent is growing because it is a zealous summiteer. And now, in response to ‘debt-trap’ criticism, it also appears to be stressing private sector investment in Africa over loans and credit. Are there any takeaways for India in this?
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Africa today holds great economic allure for the major powers, which are looking to deepen their partnerships with it. India, which shares a rich past with the continent, has been adopting many measures to step up economic diplomacy in the region
Courtesy: Gateway House
This version of the Gateway House Map on China’s Expanding Global Telecom Empire identifies some more telecommunication assets -- optic-fibre and satellite ground stations -- that Beijing is working on in South and Central America, Africa, Myanmar, the Indian Ocean Region and mainland China besides the existing ones, such as the Pakistan East Africa Cable Express (PEACE). It shows the direction China’s investment is taking, its diplomatic overtures and the larger geopolitical implications of its growing telecom empire
Courtesy: Exim Bank of India
The India-Africa economic partnership lags some way behind the diplomatic reciprocity the two countries share. Africa has had a trade surplus with India in the past decade, but increasing two-way trade of goods and services across sectors calls for serious promotional measures and removal of non-tariff barriers. The government, Indian business and their African partners need to devise an action plan that can take trade to $100 billion and investment to $75 billion by 2022
Cyrus Rustomjee, Senior Fellow, Global Economy Program, Centre for International Governance Innovation, Canada, spoke to Gateway House on how the Blue Economy offers exciting opportunities to even the poorest developing countries to eradicate poverty
Courtesy: Government of South Africa/ Flickr
Internal political constraints dog it currently, but if overcome, South Africa can be a good chairman to BRICS and IORA in 2018. It also has a tough balancing act to perform between two great Asian powers, China and India
