Charting the contours of India’s Africa outreach

PM?’s Ethiopia visit was a strategic inflection point, but the bilateral ties will need continuous political attention, and policy execution adaptability

- Dr. Gayettri Dixit and Akshan Ranjan

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s state visit at the end of the year 2025 to Ethiopia represented a notable point in the development of India-Africa relations.

At a time of escalated geopolitical contest, renewed commitment to South-South cooperation and Africa's expanding strategic prominence, this visit marked India’s vision to further strengthen its relations with one of the African continent's most significant states. Ethiopia's positioning as the diplomatic capital of Africa and host of the African Union additionally upraises the ties apart from bilateral diplomacy, embedding it within India’s broader continental and multilateral outreach (MEA 2025; DD News 2025a).

Ethiopia's detailed role in India’s current strategic calculus is still overlooked despite increasing scholarly attention to India-Africa relations. This article aims to address this gap by focusing the recent visit through wider lenses of India-Ethiopia relations and looking into how factors such as economic, geopolitical and institutional interests foster the engagement.

Historical context of India—Ethiopia Ties