Unpacks the histories, actors and geopolitics of India’s soft power and evolving engagements with Africa.
Since independence India has deployed its soft power in Africa, with educational aid and capacity-building at the heart of its Africa policy. However, following economic liberalisation and in a quest for greater global influence, India’s geopolitics have changed. The country’s discourse on Africa has shifted from the mantras of post-colonial solidarity and South-South Cooperation, and there is now a growing sense of Indian exceptionalism, as the country reimagines its past and future against the growing influence of the political right. In this book scholars from India, Africa, Europe and North America show how India’s soft power has been implemented by the diaspora, government and private sector. Research documents how India’s ‘aid’ has been re-thought in major schemes such as e-global education and health, Gandhi statuary and Covid-19 diplomacy in Africa.
قائمة المحتويات
Introduction: India-Africa Now: Changing Imaginaries and Knowledge Paradigms
Meera Venkatachalam and Kenneth King
PART 1: The Geopolitical Imaginary and Soft Power
1. India’s Soft Power in East Africa: Opportunities and Challenges
Muhidin J. Shangwe
2. Between Business and Balance: India-Japan in Africa vis-à-vis China
Mrittika Guha Sarkar and Jagannath Panda
PART 2: The Indian Political Right and the Reconfiguration of Soft Power in Africa
3. The Indian Political Right, Soft Power, and the Reimagination of Africa
Meera Venkatachalam
4. Modi and the Mahatma – The Politics of Statues and the Saffronisation of India-Africa relations
Simona Vittorini
PART 3: Capacity building: Shifting Modalities and New Knowledgescapes
5. India’s Changing Human Resource Diplomacy with Africa, and Africa’s Responses
Kenneth King
6. A Shining Example: Modelling Growth in India’s Pan-African e-Network
Vincent Duclos
7. Partnership in Times of Pandemic: India’s Covid Diplomacy with a Lens on Africa
Supriya Roychoudhury and Emma Mawdsley
PART 4: Skilling, Knowledge Transfer, and Indo-African Interactions
8. Precarious Partnerships: Tanzanian Entrepreneurs of Asian and African Descent
Jacqueline Halima Mgumia and Chambi Chachage
9. The Trumpets and Travails of South-South Cooperation: African Students in India since the 1940s
Gerard Mc Cann
Conclusion: Reflections on India-Africa Studies, Development Cooperation, and Soft Power
Kenneth King and Meera Venkatachalam
عن المؤلف
MEERA VENKATACHALAM is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Mumbai, and co-editor of India-Africa Partnerships for Food Security and Capacity Building: South-South Cooperation (2021).