Covid-19 pandemic may create opportunities to deepen India’s engagement with Africa
Sujan R Chinoy The Indian Express Africa Day is observed every year on May 25 to commemorate the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (now known as the African Union). India has been closely associated with it on account of its shared colonial past and rich contemporary ties. The Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses has hosted an Africa Day Round Table annually for the last four years in order to commemorate this epochal event. This year, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has marred the celebrations in India. Africa, too, has come to a standstill due to the coronavirus . The World Bank’s Africa’s Pulse, a biannual analysis of the near-term macroeconomic outlook for the region, in its April 9 report, assessed that the COVID-19 outbreak has sparked off the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region’s first recession in 25 years. Growth is expected to plummet to between -2.1 and -5.1 per cent in 2020, from a modest 2.4 per cent in 2019. With high rates of ...