On Africa, India is skating on thin ice at G20, UN

From the struggles of decolonisation till the Narendra Modi government’s recent initiatives, New Delhi has heavily invested in Africa.

Ever since India assumed the presidency of the Group of Twenty (G20) countries seven months ago, a stock question from foreign participants at media briefings and think-tank discussions — mostly in-camera — has been about the possibility that Prime Minister Narendra Modi might invite Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the G20 Summit in New Delhi in September.

The vague replies that Indian government briefers consistently offered to that question was commonly interpreted to mean that they did not know the answer: it was above their paycheck. On June 8, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar answered this dominant question. At a special media briefing convened to discuss nine years of Modi’s foreign policy record, Jaishankar categorically said: “In our view, G20 participation is for members of G20 and for the countries and organisations who we have invited to the G20. And that list we had declared as soon as we assumed the presidency of the G20. It is not something that we have reviewed. And it is not something very honestly which we have discussed with anybody.”

An end to this long-running query has had the effect of another question about the composition of G20 or attendance at its New Delhi summit taking the place of Ukraine’s participation. The new hobby horse for the strategic community and G20 influencers is a permanent membership for the African Union (AU) in the grouping.

The immediate trigger for this was a letter written by Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this month to all G20 leaders, proposing that the AU should be accorded full membership of the group. If this move to permanently include the AU in G20 succeeds during the Indian presidency, which will last till November, it will be far more consequential than the controversial proposal to invite Zelenskyy to New Delhi.

Modi’s initiative for permanent AU membership in G20 rests on the horns of a dilemma. Africa has become an existential foreign policy problem for India. At the annual debate in the United Nations General Assembly last November, the 55-member African group came out forcefully against India’s long-held stand that UN Security Council membership should be increased through text-based discussions in an existing Intergovernmental Negotiating (IGN) Committee set up by the General Assembly. Some African states such as Burundi said that “engaging in text-based negotiations at this stage without agreeing on principles will not only be premature, but counterproductive”. Zimbabwe said reform should be based on consensus, not on some text imposed by a few countries. Harare’s reference was to the Group of Four (G4) — India, Brazil, Germany, and Japan. With 55 out of the UN’s 193 members opposing the G4 stand, India’s hope of a permanent UNSC seat has severely receded. The IGN was set up 14 years ago with strenuous efforts from New Delhi. However, India’s African quandary goes far deeper than expediency at the UN.

On December 9, the White House Senior Director for African Affairs, Judd Devermont, annoyed the Modi government’s G20 team when he interloped on their exclusive domain by bringing up the issue of AU’s role in G20. “It is past time Africa has permanent seats at the table in international organizations and initiatives. We need more African voices in international conversations that concern the global economy, democracy and governance, climate change, health, and security,” he said in a statement issued in Washington a week before a Summit between African leaders and the United States of America. By then, India’s G20 presidency had already invited the AU to attend the group’s New Delhi Summit as a guest. New Delhi felt Devermont was upstaging them by announcing that US President Joe Biden would endorse the AU’s long-standing demand to be permanently seated in G20 at his Washington Summit.

At that time, Biden was himself on the horns of a dilemma. China has been quietly telling African leaders that it would raise the issue of AU’s G20 membership at its next summit. The US did not want China’s scorecard in Africa to go up if the continent’s G20 membership became a Chinese initiative. So, at his Washington Summit, Biden demanded full G20 membership for the AU.

Africa is the next region for competing influence between the US and China. India is not far behind in this competition. From the struggles of decolonisation till the Modi government’s recent initiatives, New Delhi has heavily invested in Africa. It will have to skate on thin ice in G20 and in the UN if such investment is not to go to waste.

(KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.