Africa Trends

H.E Alem Tsehaye Woldemariam, Ambassador of Eritrea and Dean of African Heads of Missions

It is my pleasure to be here  for this important Africa Day roundtable dialogue on India-Africa Partnership in a Changing World.

• Alem Tsehaye Woldemariam
• July-December 2019
• Africa Trends

The Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses has hosted the Africa Day Roundtable annually since the last three years in order to commemorate Africa Day, which was earlier referred to as African Freedom Day and African Liberation Day. The IDSA Africa Day Roundtable has evolved into a well-established platform to discuss India-Africa ties. It contributes to the giant strides that India has taken under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to re-define and transform its ties with the dynamic continent of Africa.

• Amb. Sujan R. Chinoy
• July-December 2019
• Africa Trends

As the digital infrastructure backed by China becomes increasingly prevalent in the African continent, it is also important for the latter to have enough oversight to ensure that these tools are not misused. Moreover, it would be more beneficial for Africa to allow other players to thrive in the region.

• Kritika Roy
• January-June 2019
• Africa Trends

It will be difficult to build a set of genuine national security forces when there is no widespread agreement on what constitutes the Somali ‘nation’ and how it should be governed. The future of Somalia thus hangs in balance.

• Aarushi Vikram
• January-June 2019
• Africa Trends

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to India provided an opportunity to honour the contribution of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi and reinvigorate India’s relations with South Africa, a strategic partner and a leading economic power in Africa.

• Ruchita Beri
• January-June 2019
• Africa Trends

The work for the Department of Peace Operations is thus amply clear. It must privilege the substantive side in its thinking as it approaches mandate making. This would ease the work of peacekeepers and contain the thrust in recent years towards a militarisation of peacekeeping under the cover of robust peacekeeping.

• Ali Ahmed
• January-June 2019
• Africa Trends

Africa has an extensive and strategically located maritime space. This domain is vital for various reasons, including its abundance of economic resources and as a conduit for trade. Unfortunately, the potential of the African maritime space is being undermined by persistent, multifaceted and fluid domestic, regional and international threats and vulnerabilities. To tackle this, littoral African states have entered into various collaborative engagements at international and inter-agency level. The success of these arrangements is in turn greatly hampered by various practical challenges, including mistrust, diversity, ‘silo approach’ and lack of identified common Afro-centric security priorities and protocols. An urgent need for a functional collaborative engagement emerges as vital for a sustainable blue economy in Africa.

• Njoki Mboce
• July-December 2018
• Africa Trends

While the political process is delicately poised and is making slow progress, there remain gigantic challenges to surmount. The main issues of contention among the different groups are sharing of political power, fight for control over Libya’s huge petroleum resources, and accommodating the armed groups loyal to different factions into a unified national military force.

• Prasanta Kumar Pradhan
• July-December 2018
• Africa Trends

In many ways Turkey is reviving its historic relations with Africa with an eye to strengthen economic ties and gain strategic depth, but for some this is a reminder of the bitter past and represents neo-Ottomanism.

• Md. Muddassir Quamar
• July-December 2018
• Africa Trends

The media, visual and means of mass communication have often been criticised for presenting a biased and skewed viewpoint on the conflict. However, the power of documentaries like the Ghosts of Rwanda which present before the audiences the unpalatable realities of the world, compels the international community to ponder, discuss and accept the need for change in its institutions and their ways of working. The release of the documentary became a moment of unfolding of the pristine rubric of United Nations, especially of its peacekeeping mandates, which were discriminatory and caught in power struggles.

• Priyal Pandey
• July-December 2018
• Africa Trends