Addis Ababa, Oct 10 — External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar on Saturday chaired a conference of India’s Heads of Mission in Africa in Addis Ababa, saying India and Africa share deep linkages built upon Global South solidarity, strategic autonomy, multipolarity and common development aspirations.
“Chaired today in Addis Ababa a conference of our Heads of Mission in Africa. India and Africa share deep linkages built upon Global South solidarity, straategic autonomy, multipolarity and common development aspirations,” EAM Jaishankar posted on X.
“We held in depth discussions on taking forward our partnership across trade, investments, connectivity, development partnership, and capacity building,” he added.
The conference came a day after the EAM laid out his vision for the India-Africa partnership in an address in the Ethiopian capital.
On Friday, EAM Jaishankar said partnerships of the future must “help create capabilities, not promote dependencies”, and called for a reformed UN Security Council with fair representation for Africa, while speaking on the India-Africa partnership at the Adwa Memorial Museum in Addis Ababa.
While the vocabulary and the challenges may have changed, the essential question remained “who gets to decide our future,” EAM Jaishankar said, adding that “this is the question that brings the global South, especially India and Africa, together.”
“It is no longer sufficient to describe India and Africa only through the vocabulary of historical solidarity. History has given us trust,” EAM Jaishankar said, stressing that the relationship must now evolve.
He said development partnerships could be built on mutual respect.
“They need not be prescriptive, condescending or conditional. They can be based on respect and equality, shared capabilities, and most of all, shared prosperity,” he said.
On global governance, EAM Jaishankar said India worked resolutely during its G20 Presidency in 2023 to secure permanent membership for the African Union, and “the same logic now applies to the reform process of the UN Security Council”.
Reform, he said, “is not merely to add more seats around an old table. It is to make global governance more democratic, more responsive, and more representative”, adding that Africa must be represented fairly in both categories of Council membership, in line with the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration.