External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar on Friday said partnerships of the future must “help create capabilities, not promote dependencies”, and called for a reformed UN Security Council with fair representation for Africa, while speaking on the India-Africa partnership at the Adwa Memorial Museum in Addis Ababa.
“It inspired those struggling against colonialism and racial domination in Africa and beyond. It strengthened the belief that all subjugated people had the right and the capacity to determine their own destiny,” he said.
While the vocabulary and the challenges may have changed, the essential question remained “who gets to decide our future,” EAM Jaishankar said, adding that “this is the question that brings the global South, especially India and Africa, together.”
Recalling the shared experience of colonialism, the EAM invoked Nelson Mandela’s words, “You gave us Mohandas Gandhi, we gave you Mahatma Gandhi.”
“India consistently opposed colonialism and apartheid. For us, African freedom was not some distant geopolitical question. It was part of the unfinished business of our own freedom,” he said.
“It is no longer sufficient to describe India and Africa only through the vocabulary of historical solidarity. History has given us trust,” EAM Jaishankar said, stressing that the relationship must now evolve.
He said development partnerships could be built on mutual respect.
“They need not be prescriptive, condescending or conditional. They can be based on respect and equality, shared capabilities, and most of all, shared prosperity,” he said.
On global governance, EAM Jaishankar said India worked resolutely during its G20 Presidency in 2023 to secure permanent membership for the African Union, and “the same logic now applies to the reform process of the UN Security Council”.
Reform, he said, “is not merely to add more seats around an old table. It is to make global governance more democratic, more responsive, and more representative”, adding that Africa must be represented fairly in both categories of Council membership, in line with the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration.
Turning to Ethiopia, the EAM recalled the participation of Indian soldiers in the country’s liberation from Italian occupation and the generations of Indian teachers who taught in Ethiopian schools and universities. He noted that bilateral ties were elevated to a strategic partnership during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit last year.
“We seek fairness, we seek representation, we seek opportunity. And above all, we seek the freedom to shape our own future,” EAM Jaishankar said, adding that India would walk the path with Africa as a friend and partner.
-IANS
