Bharat and Kenya inked five pacts during the recent state visit of Kenyan President William Samoei Ruto. Bharat also announced a 250 million dollars credit line to Kenya for the modernization of its agricultural sector. The two sides signed pacts in a number of areas including trade, energy, defence, digital public infrastructure, and healthcare. Bharat and Kenya also reportedly unveiled a vision document to step up maritime engagement in the Indian Ocean region.
Kenyan President’s state visit to Bharat at a time of significant geopolitical upheaval in the Europe and middle East has to be looked at in the context of Bharat’s rising status as a superpower and its championing of the rights of the global south.
It’s also a strong signal to China vis-à-vis the Indo-Pacific. Bharat is stepping up engagement with the global south on multiple fronts. A vital aspect of this engagement is Bharat’s Indo-Pacific policy which seems to be moving beyond the customary and ritualistic framework of the Quad and embracing direct engagement with Pacific islands and Indian Ocean countries.
Bharat’s outreach to Africa and its championing of the rights of the global south came to the spotlight with the successful inclusion of the African Union in G 20 as a permanent member during Bharat’s hosting of the G20 Summit in 2023. Strange as it may sound, South Africa was the only member of G20 representing Africa till then. The body has disproportionately high representation from European countries, and the European Union too is a separate member of the G20. Bharat successfully voiced its concerns against this blatant neocolonialism of the 21st century resulting in the successful inclusion of the African Union in the G20.
Bharat also pioneered the Global South Summit. The second session of the summit was held in November as leaders from various countries of the global south gathered for the virtual summit under the theme “Global South: Together for Everyone’s Growth, Everyone’s Trust”. The summit was inaugurated by PM Modi who gave an introductory address on the common concerns of the global south.
Papua New Guinea, an island nation in the Pacific made news in May 2023 when Prime Minister Modi became the first Bharatiya PM to visit the country. The visuals of Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape touching PM Modi’s feet were all over the internet. The Bharatiya PM was in Papua New Guinea to attend the Third Summit of the Forum for Indo-Pacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC).
PM Modi’s Papua New Guinea was also symbolic in the wake of US President Joe Biden cancelling his trip to the island nation because of domestic concerns. The island nation went out of its way to welcome Bharat breaking its protocol of not welcoming visitors after sunset. Sending out a strong message to China, Bharat utilized the opportunity to deepen its engagement with the 14 Pacific Island countries including Fiji, Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Palau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.
Mainly dependent on tourism and foreign aid for their economy, these small island nations have always been vulnerable to the interference of the “big” countries in their internal affairs. These nations have become a sort of wrestling ground between China and the west, especially the US, with both players having their own vested interests.
Bharat, with no history of interfering in the internal affairs of smaller countries and with no track record of debt-trap diplomacy, comes as a natural and reliable partner to these countries. Wary of China’s debt trap diplomacy and the muscle flexing of the big western countries, these small island nations look up to Bharat as a reliable partner who will forge an honest partnership based on mutual interests. That is precisely why Bharat’s outreach to the global south is yielding strong dividends. The countries in the global south are looking for a better alternative than the west and China for aiding their development and forging strategic partnerships on equal terms.
It is in the context of this rapidly evolving dynamics of Bharat’s engagement with the global south that need to look at the Kenyan President’s recent state visit. The Kenyan President emphasized that terrorism is a big issue for both Kenya and Bharat and that the two countries need to collaborate in this direction by way of intelligence sharing and defence partnership.
Not many people might be aware of the fact that just like Bharat, Kenya has also been a victim of cross-border Islamic terrorism. The country reportedly suffered one of its worst terrorist attacks in 2019 when the al-Shabaab terrorist organization attacked a hotel complex in Nairobi. According to the US government’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2019 on Kenya, “terrorists continued to exploit Kenya’s largely uncontrolled land borders to conduct attacks”.
Al-Shabaab is an Islamic insurgent group based in Somalia. A military campaign reportedly led by the African Union and supported by the US and other western countries apparently had a significant impact in checking the spread of the group but according to various sources, the Islamic terrorist organization still continues to control large parts of Somalia and mounts lethal attacks against civilians and international forces in the region.
According to a Voice of America news report published a few months back, counterterrorism experts have claimed that Africa is now the world’s terrorism hotspot, with half of the victims of terrorist organizations killed last year belonging to sub-Saharan Africa, even though al-Qaida and Islamic State affiliates remained active and persistent around the world.
A Google search of the term “Terrorism in Africa” shows many search results of reports and research studies that give one an insight into the alarming rise of Islamic terrorism in Africa over the years. Yet, it is surprising that the mainstream media never puts any spotlight on the issue of Islamic extremism in Africa.
As countries across the world continue to suffer the onslaught of Islamic terrorism, the mainstream international media is busy glorifying Hamas and demonizing Israel. That is why it’s crucial for Bharat to find like-minded partners from the global south in the fight against terrorism. The Kenyan President’s statement in Bharat regarding terrorism is crucial because it gives Bharat the impetus to mobilize support for its concerns vis-à-vis Islamic terrorism from the 55-member bloc of the African Union.
Addressing a joint press meet with visiting Kenyan President William Ruto, PM Modi also emphasized that the Kenyan President’s Bharat visit will not just provide a boost to Bharat-Kenya bilateral relations, but also pave the way for Bharat’s deepening engagement with the African Union.
Africa is often portrayed as a marginal player in the world of geopolitics, subaltern you may call it, to use the language of literature and social sciences. We get to hear and read the stories of Africa mostly through the western gaze, having little or no access to African media or how Africa views itself and the world.
The western media has long exoticized Africa portraying it as an underdeveloped continent surviving due to benign foreign aid, and a place warped in internal conflicts. But we have never heard Africa’s perspective on its own growth trajectory. Perhaps, Bharat should take the lead in this regard and forge valuable partnerships with African media so that the people of Bharat get more first-hand insight into the society, politics, and culture of Africa. The Bharatiya media, should, in fact, be encouraged to set up bureaus in African countries as well as other countries of the global south to get a real understanding of the issues on the ground.
Bharat’s efforts at forging a united front for the global south go beyond the surface rhetoric. It’s a larger call for decolonization, for a radical redefinition of indigenous cultures across the world outside the paradigm of stereotypical western gaze.
