India in Africa

Changing Geographies of Power

Edited by Emma Mawdsley, Gerard McCann

”An indispensable book for those who want to understand the compulsion and politics of recent Chinese and Indian involvement in Africa, written by experts in a language accessible to the non-expert.”
Yash Ghai, Activist, and scholar of international law, and Chairman of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission 2000-2004.

Major changes are taking place in the global economy and polity. While China’s relationship to Africa is much examined, knowledge and analysis of India’s role in Africa has until now been limited but, as a significant global player, India’s growing interactions with various African countries call for detailed analysis of the Asian giant’s influence and its relations with the African continent.

In this original book, which enables readers to compare India to China and other ‘rising powers’ in Africa, expert African, Indian and western commentators draw on a collection of accessibly written case studies to explore inter-related areas including trade, investment, development aid, civil society relations, security and geopolitics.

Contributors: Padraig Carmody, Fantu Cheru, Alex Gadzala, Dave Harris, Paul Kamau, Emma Mawdsley, Gerard McCann, Dorothy McCormick, Renu Modi, Sanusha Naidu, Cyril Obi, Zarina Patel, Luke Patey, Zahid Rajan, Alex Vines, Simona Vittorini

Contents

Introduction: India’s rise and the African horizons: a critical analysis

Part I India–Africa relations in context

1 From littorals to liberalisation: a brief history of India–Africa relations
Gerard McCann
2 India–Africa relations in the twenty-first century: genuine partnership or a marriage of convenience?
Fantu Cheru & Cyril Obi
3 India and the ‘Asian drivers’ in Africa
Padraig Carmody
4 The virtues of reciprocity: Indian development cooperation and the insights of ‘gift theory’
Emma Mawdsley

Part II Contemporary India–East Africa engagements

5 India–Kenya economic relations and the impact on the Kenyan garment industry
Paul Kamau & Dorothy McCormick
6 ‘Diaspora’, political economy and Indian investment in Kenya
Gerard McCann
7 Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs in the East African economies
Alex Gadzala
8 Debating the emerging actors in Africa: a CSO perspective
Sanusha Naidu
9 Medical tourism from Africa to India: opportunities and problems
Renu Modi
10 Awaaz: a personal journey
Zarina Patel

Part III The wider picture: India–Africa ‘partnerships’

11 India’s security concerns in the western Indian Ocean
Alex Vines
12 Africa in India’s quest for energy security
Ruchita Beri
13 Fragile fortunes: India’s oil venture into war-torn Sudan
Luke Patey
14 India–Africa technology linkages: a sphere of South–South cooperation
Sachin Chaturvedi
15 India goes over to the other side: Indo–West African relations in the twenty-first century
Simona Vittorini & David Harris

Bibliography

About the Authors

Emma Mawdsley is a Senior Lecturer in the Geography Department at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Her work on development politics includes research on ‘whose ideas count’ in transnational NGO networks; and emerging state-NGO relations in the 21C; the World Bank’s World Development Report series; and the US’s Millennium Challenge Account. She has been researching the ‘rising powers’ and development cooperation for several years, and has presented her work in a number of academic and policy forums. This is part of a wider interest in the ‘rising powers’, and she has co-led research and writing on contemporary India-Africa relations (with Gerard McCann), and written on China and Africa. She is currently leading a collaborative project funded by DFID to look at the public face of ‘foreign aid’ in China, India, Russia, Poland and South Africa. As well as research on development politics, she continues to research and teach on India’s environmental politics.

Gerard McCann is a Lecturer in international history at the University of York, before which he was the Mellon Fellow in Transnational History at Oxford University. His book on India–Africa relations, to be published as part of Zed Books’ African Arguments series, will be completed in early 2011.