The model of cooperation emerging from the first India-Africa Forum Summit has governed India’s approach since. The Delhi Declaration made clear that:
This partnership will be based on the fundamental principles of equality, mutual respect, and understanding between our peoples for our mutual benefit. It will also be guided by the following principles: respect for the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity of states and commitment to deepen the process of African integration; collective action and cooperation for the common good of our states and peoples; dialogue among our civilizations to promote a culture of peace, tolerance and respect for religious, cultural, linguistic and racial diversities as well as gender equality with the view to strengthening the trust and understanding between our peoples; the positive development of intra-regional/sub-regional integration by complementing and building upon existing/sub-regional initiatives in Africa; recognition of diversity between and within regions, including different social and economic systems and levels of development; and further consolidation and development of plural democracy.
Beyond the diplomatic rhetoric, the strength of the Indian model of cooperation with Africa has lain in its non-prescriptive nature. India has made it clear throughout that it seeks mutual benefit through a consultative process. Indian diplomats do not instruct, impose or even demand certain approaches or projects in Africa, but offer to contribute to the achievement of Africa’s development objectives as they have been set by our African partners. Besides the consultative process and the spirit of friendship, both of which are clearly linked to our desire to fulfil the developmental aspirations of African countries rather than to prescribe them ourselves, there is also the element of a sharing of knowledge and experience for which many African countries often want to relate to us. India’s multicultural, multi-ethnic, multiparty pluralistic democracy has emerged as an attraction to many African countries moving in the same direction. So are our parliamentary institutions and procedures, and our manner of conducting free and fair elections. Our ability to work with the non-governmental sector and civil society in our quest for inclusive growth is also an important lesson which many African countries have wanted to share with us. This sharing of experiences on political cooperation is, therefore, another aspect of our non-intrusive support to the development of democratic institutions in our partner countries.
Similarly, areas of human resource development and capacity building have been at the forefront of our partnership with Africa. Both India and Africa are blessed with young populations. At the first India-Africa Forum Summit, India announced a grant of $500 million specifically to undertake projects in human resource development and capacity building. It is only by investing in the creative energies of our youth that the potential of our partnership will be fulfilled. Tens of thousands of African students have received education and training in Indian institutions; at any time there are at least 10,000 to 15,000 African students studying in various parts of India. The African students at present in India, nearly 1000 of them on Government of India scholarships but a larger number on a self-financing basis, add to the experience of many African countries with Indian teachers and professors. Long-term scholarships for undergraduates, postgraduates and higher courses have been doubled and the number of slots under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme has increased to 1600 every year. This partnership in human resource development has been augmented by the tele-education component of the Pan African e-Network project which is visionary in its appeal and impact. The role of information and communications technology (ICT), science and technology, and research and development has contributed to the enhancement of our engagement with Africa in this important area of human resource development.
The 1600 training positions offered under India’s technical cooperation programme to Africa have also become important avenues of capacity building. India is in the process of establishing nineteen institutions on African soil jointly with the African Union Commission and the member states, including an India-Africa Institute of Information Technology, an India-Africa Institute of Foreign Trade, an India-Africa Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, an India-Africa Diamond Institute, ten vocational training centres and five human settlement institutes in Africa to contribute to capacity building. Such endeavours to invest in human capital and sustainable political systems have made human resource development a vital aspect of India’s model of cooperation with Africa.
Technology has of course been a particularly valuable Indian calling card. The Pan African e-Network project that seeks to bridge the ‘digital divide’ between Africa and the rest of the world is one of the most far-reaching initiatives undertaken by India anywhere in the world. Already nearly fifty countries have joined this programme, which is intended to provide e-services (with priority for tele-education and telemedicine services) and VVIP connectivity by satellite and fibre optic network among the heads of state of all fifty-three countries. The project would give major benefits to Africa in capacity building through skill and knowledge development of students, medical specialists and for medical consultation.
India has also offered to share with African nations its experience in using remote-sensing and satellite-imagery for weather-forecasting, natural resources management, land use and land-cover mapping and a variety of other applications.
What has not always worked as well as it might is the pace of implementation of many Indian projects in Africa. It is true that as a democratic country we have to have consultations and build consensus. Sometimes our overly strong bureaucracy takes too literally its obligation to act as a check and balance on decision-making. But if the government is sometimes accused of being slow, once it takes a decision to go forward, progress is steady.
There is an undoubted need, however, for more careful management and audit of disbursements made through the government’s lines of credit for Africa. In 2009, several reports appeared of questionable transactions relating to the export of rice at subsidized prices to several African countries, but these were never fully investigated and the allegations have largely petered out. Given that these lines of credit amount to considerable sums of money — more than $5 billion, or 
25,000 crore — there is a fundamental need for greater transparency in the allocation of funds, the choice of projects, the drawing up of the requirements for bidders and the selection of contractors. This should not be allowed to slow the process down, but it is essential that India’s relations with Africa not be reduced in the eyes of some critics to an unsavoury boondoggle.
One way of compensating for the deficiencies of the governmental sector in this model of cooperation is India’s increased reliance on its burgeoning private-sector investment in Africa, which has acquired much greater visibility in the last few years. This has been more manifest ever since India liberalized its own economic system in 1991 and, in the twenty-first century, private Indian investment in Africa is giving the relationship a new vigour and impetus. Indian companies have made large investments in Africa running into several billion dollars in industry, agriculture, infrastructure and human resource development.
An illustrative example of an Indian private-sector success story is Vedanta Resources’ turnaround of Zambia’s copper mining industry — which had been nationalized in the late 1960s, driven into ruin, resold to the former owners, Anglo American PLC, the South African mining giant, which failed to revive them and were then essentially abandoned. Vedanta, an FTSE 100 Indian metals and mining group, came in 2004 to buy a majority shareholding in Konkola, the jewel in the crown of the Zambian mines, and other properties, and made them hugely profitable: its CEO, Anil Agarwal, likes to boast that he is ‘26 per cent of Zambia’s GDP’. Other examples, big and small, abound: Tata Steel’s $1.5-billion joint venture in an iron project in Cote d’Ivoire, Apollo Tyres’ manufacturing plants for rubber automobile tyres, and many ventures in the continent’s fastest-growing region, East Africa, which has the oldest historical links with India, and some of the largest communities of Indian origin.