Introduction

Abstract

India and Africa share a history dating back millennia. The relations were shaped by traders who crossed the Indian Ocean as early as over 2000 years ago, but also by colonialism, which brought exploitation and subjugation to both regions. Mahatma Gandhi became the personification of Indo-African ties and Jawaharlal Nehru became the first architect of India’s Africa policy. However, in the first decades after independence, trade and material assistance were irrelevant; instead, the focus lay on principles and values, on sharing developmental knowledge and capacity building and on the common fight against discrimination and apartheid. Today, India is one of Africa’s biggest trading-partner countries, second only to China. The country regularly extends lines of credit worth billions to African nations, and its pharmaceutical producers dominate many African markets; almost one-fifth of India’s oil imports and more than one-quarter of its natural gas imports come from the continent. The introductory chapter lays out the research interest and research questions guiding the present study of India’s Africa policy. How have the watershed of economic liberalisation and India’s subsequent rise to the status of an emerging power affected its Africa policy and how has India engaged with Africa since the 1990s? After a cursory overview of the existing literature on India’s Africa policy, the outline of the study is presented.