Addis Ababa, October 10 (WIC) – India and the African Union have held meetings on 7 October, 2011 to discuss the Action Plan under the Enhanced Framework of Cooperation adopted at the Second Africa India Forum Summit held in Addis Ababa in May 2011.
A delegation led by Gurjit Singh, Additional Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs had discussions with the African Union Commission and the Multilateral Affairs Sub-Committee of the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the African Union.
According to a statement Embassy of India sent to WIC today, the Indian offer of establishing a large number of training and capacity building institutions in Africa was discussed in detail.
After the offer of 21 institutions at the First India Africa Forum Summit, India has now offered to establish more than 80 institutions in Africa.
Several of these would be implemented bilaterally, for which offers of specific institutions have been made to various African countries.
Other institutions will be established through the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) to whom also offers have been made and will be further discussed at the second meeting of India with Africa’s Regional Economic Communities to be held in New Delhi on 8/9 November 2011.
The African Union is discussing the establishment of six pan African institutions presently offered by India, namely India Africa Food Processing Cluster, India Africa Integrated Textiles Cluster, India Africa Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, India Africa Institution of Agriculture and Rural Development, India Africa Civil Aviation Academy; and Pan African University for Life and Earth Sciences.
India has offered to increase the scholarships to 22,000 over a 3-year period i.e. 2011-2014. These include the special agricultural scholarships; the Raman fellowships for Science and Technology; scholarships for graduate studies; fellowships for social science research; and a large number of short term training positions both under the existing ITEC programme and nearly 500 positions per year for special capacity building courses for Africa.
During the meeting, review of the implementation of decisions of the India Africa Forum Summit was also undertaken. Satisfaction was expressed that progress had been consistent and the structure of cooperation had been clearly defined which would make it easier for the model to be continued for the new institutions to be established.
During the discussions, it was noted that several India Africa conferences were to take place in India between October and December 2011.
The conferences include, India Africa Workshop on Traditional Medicines in Jaipur, India Africa Civil Aviation Negotiation Conference in Mumbai, India-African RECs meeting in New Delhi, Workshop on Mobilisation of Domestic Savings in New Delhi, Conference on Economic Partnership for Infrastructure Development through the Lines of Credit in New Delhi; and India Africa Business Partnership Summit in Hyderabad.