The third India-Africa Forum Summit, which will see the participation of all African nations for the first time, will launch a new era of mutual partnership, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In an interview with African journalists at the editors forum of the third India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) here on Friday, Modi said India's areas of focus will continue to be human resource development, institution building, infrastructure, clean energy, agriculture, health, education and skill development.
He said "the summit would set substantially higher targets for our development partnership".
Noting that India's primary aim is to support its African partners in their efforts to accelerate the momentum of their development, Modi said the summit will also address key challenges of present times including food, health and environmental security.
"We will create conditions that stimulate trade and investment flows between our countries. We will work together to address the problems of climate change. We will explore new areas like a sustainable blue economy. We hope to learn a great deal from numerous African success stories," the prime minister said.
Modi, a Gujarati and former chief minister of Gujarat for over a decade, said that he had his "links with Africa" both during as well as before his tenure as the chief minister of the state. "Even today there are 2,70,000 Indians who live in Africa and many of them are Gujaratis," he added.
Pointing out that India and Africa have many similarities, Modi said India and Africa should speak in one voice to bring about reforms at the United Nations Security Council and in global financial institutions.
"We have four times as many member countries in the United Nations as we had at its inception. Awareness of rights and aspirations for progress is more widespread now. Global power is more distributed," he said, adding, global political, economic and security institutions must therefore become more democratic, inclusive and representative of the world.
He further said that the bilateral trade between India and Africa has grown by 8 to 9 times in the past few years, adding that India has given concessional credit to the tune of $7.4 billion.
"In more than 40 countries today there are more than 100 projects, which are under implementation," Modi said, emphasizing that India has invested $1.2 billion in more than 100 institutes.
This is the first time in the history of IAFS that all the 54 African nations will be participating in the forum.
