INDIA & AFRICA OLD FRIENDS, NEW VISION

The African continent is as vast as it is enigmatic. It's the only place on Earth to hold key evidence of human evolution but somehow appears to have been left in a time warp.

- Ravi Srivastava

Global Centerpiece

It is the second largest in size and the second most populous continent after Asia. Flanked by the Americas, Europe and Asia, Africa as a continent is the world's centrepiece. It is straddled between strategic waters of the Atlantic Ocean in the West and the Indian Ocean in the East. It's a confluence of 55 nations and a few disputed territories, it has largely held a limited pace of growth. Vastly rich in resources Africa was a prime territory of interest during colonization. The extent of exploitation was such that even after gaining independence from colonial powers most African countries found themselves struggling to adequately address their people's basic aspirations.

Africa's link with India goes back to several centuries and has been well documented in 60 AD by a Greek author in his Guidebook of the Red Sea. Modern connect has been established in the late 19th century when Mahatma Gandhi's inspirational struggle against racial and colonial atrocities in South Africa later transformed into a rallying point for India's own independence movement. Africa has held a place of prominence in the psyche of common Indians. Africa and India though separated by land are closely connected by the waters of the Indian Ocean through the Horn of Africa, known to be the world's busiest commercial shipping lanes.

Geopolitical Complication