With Focus On Health And Education, India Takes The ‘Soft’ Route To Counter Rising Chinese Presence In Africa

India has successfully launched a pan-Africa digital educational and health network, paving a way for itself ahead of China, with India’s giant neighbour still to delve into the arena. China, however is on a quest to establish leadership in the continent through several big-budget infrastructure projects.

The Indian project, which spans over five years, is aimed at giving out televised-educational services across academic disciplines to over 4,000 students from different countries. Apart from the aforementioned, India will also impart medical training to over 1,000 eligible candidates comprising of doctors, nurses and paramedical staff from the continent for free, reported Economic Times.

The project is also caters to the French-speaking countries in West Africa. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj flagged off the project on Monday (10 September).

To get the project going, a few centres of data and disaster recovery will be established in India along with the learning centres across Africa.

Funded wholly by India, the project is open to all nations in Africa, and they are welcome to participate, an official said. Phase 1 of the project was implemented from 2009 to 2017, and the latest development can be seen as a technological upgrade and an extension to the network.

With Chinese presence in the region expanding, the continent is now a priority for the Indian government. So far, there have been more than 25 high-level visits from India to several African nations, ranging from Presidential to even a Prime Ministerial level of talks and diplomatic exchange.