Scoping an India-Japan Cooperative Framework for Africa: The ‘AAGC’ and Beyond
Both countries have espoused the need for a plural rules-based maritime order, and the chaperoning of a mercantilist and infrastructure development edifice which is anchored-in political transparency, financial rectitude, social consultation, and ecologically congruent actions, in the Indo-Pacific.4...
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| Published in: | Indian foreign affairs journal : a quarterly of the Association of Indian Diplomats 2023-06, Vol.17 (1/2), p.29-46 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Both countries have espoused the need for a plural rules-based maritime order, and the chaperoning of a mercantilist and infrastructure development edifice which is anchored-in political transparency, financial rectitude, social consultation, and ecologically congruent actions, in the Indo-Pacific.4 Contemporary Africa, far from being the once putative 'Dark Continent', is now universally appraised as a rising geo-economic force, reckoned as pivotal to Indo-Pacific peace, security, stability and prosperity on account of its material contribution to the critical and futuristic resources economy, propitious demographic trends, key stakes in physical and digital infrastructure capacitation, a proverbial 'ground-zero' for sustainable development driven socio-economic uplift, an actionable laboratory for addressing global commons portfolios, not to mention its geostrategic coordinates in so far as it abuts maritime connectivity trajectories. Prime Minister Abe harnessed the opportunity of TICAD 2016 (which was hosted in Africa for the first time) to not only proclaim his ideated vision of a 'Free and Open Indo-Pacific'7 but also to double down by promising an Africa-specific US$ 30 billion treasure-trove of investments by 2018, a third of which was apportioned to infrastructure development.8 At the mutual level, the revived India-Japan dialogue positioned the geopolitically contested but geo-economically prized Africa, at the crux of its IndoPacific Vision 2025, cognitively mating New Delhi's 'Act-East' and 'SAGAR' constructs, besides the development cooperation inducing the IAFS mechanism, with Tokyo's Expanded Partnership for Quality Infrastructure (EPQI) initiative, and the multilaterally forged TICAD process for regional development.9 The Indo-Japanese approach - hewed in advancement of the principles of political stability, societal emancipation through grassroots empowerment, inclusively beneficent and autonomous national development, and debt-light dimensions of hard and soft-wired strategic capacitation, through G2G linesof-credit avenues, B2B trade and investment synergies, and public-private sectors complement - laid the diplomatic groundwork for declaring of an envisioned though never categorically uttered 'Asia-Africa Growth Corridor' (AAGC) framework, alluded to in the Modi-Abe Summit of 2016.10 Hence, it came as little surprise, when this construct was proclaimed, during the 52nd plenary of the African Development Bank (AfDB) convened in Gujarat, |
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| ISSN: | 0973-3248 2229-5372 |