Africa Rising?: Brics - Diversifying Dependency by Ian Taylor

Author:Ian Taylor [Taylor, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Development, International, Economics & Trade, Economic Development, Political Science, Business & Economics, General
ISBN: 9781847010964
Google: uRAABQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 21823609
Publisher: James Currey
Published: 2014-01-15T06:14:30+00:00

Indian aid to Africa

India has emerged in recent years from being purely an aid recipient to an important aid donor. In 2003 the government announced it would no longer receive foreign aid except from a select few Western governments and it repaid $1.6 billion to 14 bilateral donors while increasing its own aid to other countries (Sinha, 2010: 77). As a result it has been termed an ‘emerging’ donor, but it may be more useful to use the appellation ‘non-DAC’ (Development Assistance Committee of the OECD) donor (Kragelund, 2011: 555), given that parts of Africa and other areas have now been receiving Indian aid for over half a century.

India’s emergence as an aid donor is obviously linked to India’s rapid economic growth: ‘Development aid, or rather, a shift from mostly being an aid recipient to also being a donor [is] perceived … as a means to acquire more international political leverage and ultimately obtain a seat in (an enlarged) UNSC’ (ibid., 2011: 594–95). This has not occurred without some controversy, with critics arguing that New Delhi openly uses its foreign aid as an instrument to gain access to overseas markets for its goods and services, pave the way for Indian investment abroad, and secure access to natural resources (e.g. Agrawal, 2007; Kragelund, 2008). Meanwhile, within India itself, there is widespread criticism among Indian policy-makers of short-term projects that ‘rapidly unravel following the ending of the three- or five-year funding cycle’ (Price, 2011: 6).

As there is no central agency managing disbursals of Indian development assistance, it is difficult to ascertain exactly how much India gives. In 2006 it was suggested that New Delhi’s development assistance programmes were at an annual level of over $350 million (Khanna and Mohan, 2006), whilst in 2009 ‘according to the various existing sources India’s annual financial volume for development cooperation is currently estimated as being in between half a billion and one billion US$’ (German Development Institute, 2009: 2). At the Africa–India Forum Summit in May 2011, it was announced that $5 billion aid for the next three years would be made available to Africa, with an additional $700 million for establishing new institutions and training programmes (Times of India, 24 May 2011).

According to one Indian source comparing China and India in Africa, ‘India’s strategy and strengths in Africa are quite different. China concentrates on resources-based investment, while India has focused on capacity building’ (Ramachandran, 2007). Of note, India was the first Asian country (in 2005) to become a full-member of the Africa Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) after guaranteeing $1 million to the ACBF to build capacity for sustainable development and poverty alleviation in Africa. A number of existing capacity building projects in Africa exemplify the focus on developing a string of higher education and vocational training institutions in Africa. The India–Africa Institute of Information Technology in Ghana will offer courses in computer software in consultation with Educational Consultants India, a state-run consulting firm. The India Africa Institute of Foreign Trade, based in Uganda, is to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.