India gives Africa $10bn Line of Credit
The Indian government has extended a Line of Credit (LoC) of $10 billion at concessional rate for a period of five years to Africa in what is seen as the biggest show of support for the continent by the Modi government.
Advertisement
This is in addition to the extension of a $600million grant for development-related, economic and capacity-building projects.
The gesture was announced by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi of India at the just-ended Third India-Africa Forum Summit in New Delhi attended by heads of state and government from 51 African countries.
Indian support
This year's summit has been described as the biggest diplomatic engagement of Africa by the Modi government and is even seen as the biggest international event on Indian soil since the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Commonwealth summits in 1983.
The Indian government has already committed $7.4 billion at concessional rate to the African countries.
The $600million grant will facilitate an India-Africa Development Fund of $100million; India-Africa Health Fund of $10million and 500,000 scholarships in India for African students over the next five years.
In a 34-point declaration dubbed the ‘Delhi Declaration 2015’, India and Africa reiterated their concerns that although the two areas comprise nearly one-third of humanity today, "they continue to be excluded from appropriate representation in the institutions of global governance that were designed for an era since long past.
Collaborative effort
The leaders of India and Africa, therefore, demand the institution of urgent collective action for more democratic global governance structures that will assist in more equitable and just international security and development frameworks.
The forum noted that 2015 had been a landmark year because along with other partners, the international community had "defined a set of Sustainable Development Goals as part of the broader 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly with a special emphasis on financing for development, on which the Third International Conference was hosted in Addis Ababa."
The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to further enhance Africa-India relations in the political, economic and socio-cultural domains based on the principles of mutuality, complementarity and true sense of solidarity as well as the promotion of people interactions.