We thank the Government of India for all the arrangements to ensure a smooth running of this important gathering in the beautiful and historic city of New Delhi. Africa and India as has been said are bound together initially by geography, but by history and by working together in our struggles to end colonialism and apartheid and ofcourse are also bound together by our great Mahatma Gandhi who is shared by both India and Africa owing to his political career in our continent in the southern tip in South Africa.
We also cooperate as two continents of Africa and India in many international fora. We cooperate today in such forums as Non Aligned Movement, and G77 plus China. I keeping with the spirit of solidarity and cooperation, our government – Indian Government after coming into office underscored the importance of strengthening African and Indian ties and promoting friendship and collaboration as you rightly indicated in one of the tweets posted prior to this summit.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, this summit is being held at a time when Africa has adopted its framework Agenda 2063: ‘The Africa We Want.’ But also 2015 is a landmark year as the world celebrates the 70th anniversary of the United Nations and 20 years since the Beijing Women’s Conference. We also do hope that the United Nations will not celebrate many more decades without correcting the historic injustice, as has been expressed, of excluding Africa and India from the Security Council permanent positions.
Together as a global community, we have defined and adopted Sustainable Development Goals so that in the coming 15 years, we decisively deal with poverty, hunger, and underdevelopment. We do hope that there will be similar consensus as we gather later this year in Paris for the Climate Change Conference to tackle yet another global challenge that requires decisive, urgent, and collective action.
These global and continental frameworks aim at creating a better world—a world of shared prosperity that protects and looks after the environment, preserves our planet for current and future generations, and a peaceful world with inclusive, democratic, and tolerant societies. We can only create this better world by working together, by building partnerships within a framework of global solidarity, focusing on the needs of our people, especially the poor and the vulnerable. We can only build this world if we build partnerships of mutual respect, benefit, and of win-win situations.
Excellencies, the early leaders of India and African independence recognized the importance of investing in our people as the key to development, but also contributing to peace and just societies. I will quote only three of them. Mahatma Gandhi said, “If we want to create real peace in this world, we must start educating children.” Jomo Kenyatta said, “You and I must work together to develop our country, to get education for our children, to have doctors, to build roads, to provide all day-to-day essentials.” And lastly, I’ll quote Nelson Mandela, who said, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.”
The African continent and India both have an abundance of people and our precious resource. In Africa, we’ve made progress in moving towards universal basic education, improving vocational training in our university sector with an emphasis on greater access to science, engineering, maths, and technology. But lots more needs to be done. This, we believe, is critical to an African skills revolution so that we unlock the potential energy, creativity, and vitality of our young people to help transform our societies faster.
Our skills revolution also recognizes that without educating and empowering girls and women, who constitute half of our population, our progress will be much slower. Under the Africa-India partnership, we have started a program of building more vocational centers, student exchanges, promoting e-learning; but we need to do more to strengthen and expand these programs.
Excellencies, we not only share the commitment to education of our people, but we also share the commitment to improve the health of our populations. A healthy population is critical to community development and as a contributor to stronger development. Empowerment of women also means healthier children, families, and communities. Africa and India should therefore continue to cooperate to support and promote strong public health systems, maternal and child health, and to enhance cooperation to make medicines more accessible, including support to pharmaceutical manufacturing in Africa.
We both want to transform our agriculture and agro-processing sectors to eliminate hunger and malnutrition and contribute towards global food security, as well as strengthen cooperation through joint business forums. It is true that agriculture is a basis for development. Africa has abundant land, water, and sun, and therefore through the Common African Agriculture Development Program, we seek to increase investments and productivity in agriculture in addition to developing agro-processing and agri-businesses.
It is also true that most of the workforce in agriculture are women. During the year 2015, the year of women’s empowerment and development towards Africa, we are working with member states so that women can have access to land rights, to capital, to markets, and technology. So it would assist us a lot if we could work hand-in-hand with India to indeed consign the handheld hoe to the museum so as to replace them with tillers and other modern technology which India is already using.
Excellencies, India and Africa are both determined to ensure that we industrialize and build manufacturing so that we can eradicate poverty, create shared prosperity, decent jobs, and economic opportunities for our people. Despite the global economic slowdown, Africa still offers the best opportunities for investments with guaranteed returns with a growing and youthful population, rapid urbanization, and a growing middle class. Bilateral trade between Africa and India has grown exponentially, and we could do more in growing investments and creating both multinational and small and medium enterprises in Africa.
Africa and India also have our oceans in common as an important part of the resource endowment. In July this year, the AU launched the African Decade of Seas and Oceans with a view to foster continental cooperation on securing livelihoods of coastal and island states, the development of marine transport, and building the African shipping industry and protecting our oceans against illegal fishing.
Having raised these issues, I would like to thank the government of India for the bilateral support it has provided to African member states in various domains. We would also like to encourage both Africa and India to build a strong people-to-people relationship through tourism and through exchange of our rich cultural heritage. The people-to-people relationship is very important. Governments come and go; the people remain.
Before closing my address, I would like to quote Prime Minister Narendra Modi on one of his tweets posted on the 17th of October 2015. He said, “Stepping up trade ties, particularly in oil and gas sector, strengthening maritime cooperation, and lifting the overall engagement to a new high will be the main agenda of the summit.” This statement is an indication that there is already a new way of thinking towards bringing in more energy and commitment to this partnership.
We look forward to the establishment of the monitoring mechanism to help us review implementation of the areas of cooperation. It is our sincere belief that the outcomes of the third Africa Summit will animate and reinvigorate the Africa-India strategic partnership. But of course, the success of the summit is as good as the implementation of the documents adopted.
I thank you. Dhanyavad.
