India committed to enhance ties with Africa: Tharoor

India is committed to enhance ties with African nations and will continue its cooperation to boost infrastructure and technology development in the continent, Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor has said.

“Priority areas of cooperation include infrastructure development, capacity-building, agriculture, health and food security and technology cooperation,” Tharoor told the UN General Assembly convened to discuss Africa’s development.

“Trade across the Indian Ocean has linked us for hundreds of years. For the people of India, Africa is also the land of awakening of the father of our nation Mahatma Gandhi,” the Minister said.

He said that India was already contributing to Africa in terms of investing in railways, IT, telecom and power.

“India has so far extended over $3 billion of concessional lines of credit to countries in Africa,” he said, adding that New Delhi would enhance the lines of credit for Africa to $5.4 billion for the next five years.

The minister also declared that both regions would work together over WTO issues such as cotton subsidies.

The General Assembly also studied the latest report of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) that calls on the international community to remove the sting of financial crisis and help the African countries meet their Millennium Development Goals.

He said the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) Programme benefits thousands of experts and students from Africa who come to pursue various professional courses.

“We have increased the number of training slots for African countries from 1100 to 1600. We have also doubled the number of scholarships for the African countries to 500,” he said.

Tharoor said that $500 million had been granted for projects in areas such as higher education, science, IT, agriculture and renewable energy over the next five years.

The Minister described ‘The Pan African E-network project’ as “one of the most far-reaching initiatives undertaken by India”.

“Already 42 countries have joined this programme which is intended to provide E-services with priority on tele-education and tele-medicine services and VVIP connectivity by satellite and fibre optic network amongst the heads of state of all 53 countries.”

Tharoor emphasised the growing engagement of Indian companies through investment over $36 billion last year in industry, agriculture, services, human resource development and infrastructure.

“We look forward to working with our African partners to take these trade and investment levels to newer heights,” he added.