As a result of India\u2019s policies of having good relationships not only with the rich prosperous countries \u2014 USA, Russia, England, France China, Japan etc but also with\u00a0\u00a0Africa and countries on the east, several initiatives are being taken to promote trade and goodwill with them. Towards this end, a Seminar was held a few weeks back in New Delhi the Indian capital, on the Legacies of Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.<\/p>\n
Last week (3, 4 September) a conference was held in Delhi again, on\u00a0\u00a0India-Africa Partnership in a Changing Global Order \u00a0to\u00a0<\/em>discuss the challenges being faced by the people of Africa and India.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Delegates who participated in the conference were from different fields \u2014 culture, education, science and technology, apart from some students and some political personalities. H.E.\u00a0Alem Woldemariam<\/em>, the Ambassador of Eritrea was present and also addressed the audience.<\/p>\n Some of the areas discussed in the Conference included\u00a0Enhancing People to People Cooperation, Common Security Challenges, Promoting Economic Development, Factoring Diaspora Relationship,\u00a0<\/em>etc. An Indian scholar who had travelled to many regions of the continent and had met Indian Diaspora living there made a very interesting presentation on these people, some of whom had been living in Africa for four generations. She spoke of their perspectives of India and how, given any opportunity they travel to India to learn about India which they somehow feel is their motherland. They also faced difficulties in India trying to locate and meet people who were relatives of their parents or grandparents.<\/p>\n Another interesting presentation made was on the popularity of Hindi cinema\u2014 usually called Bollywood, in some parts of Africa. The African people loved Indian cinema for its dances and music and social issues that were highlighted in some of the films. The speaker mentioned that even though there were occasionally no subtitles to the Hindi dialogs, they still enjoyed these films, some of which made a lot of money. The audiences loved some popular actors like Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachman, Raj Kapoor and Nargis among others.<\/p>\n Another interesting topic that was discussed was on the status of African students in Indian Universities and Colleges. Many students come to India\u00a0\u00a0because studying in India is much cheaper than in Europe or USA or Canada. But they face several problems including racial remarks that some students face and not receiving in time, scholarships and stipends they are entitled to. The speakers were sympathetic to these issues and suggested how these problems could be reduced.<\/p>\n Incidentally I am participating in a conference in Cape Town\u00a0<\/em>on 18 – 20 September. I will perhaps better appreciate the problems of overseas students during my stay in that place.<\/p>\n Like most International Conferences, there were also preventions made by some political personalities including Ambassadors and officers working in commercial enterprises in Africa. They presented a different perspective and offered some suggestions to improve\u00a0India Africa Partnership<\/em>. In this context, the Valedictory Address\u00a0was made by the Vice President of India\u00a0Shri M Venkaiah Naidu, whose photograph is appended in this article.<\/p>\n Altogether an interesting and enriching experience that promoted harmony and goodwill among delegates, students and scholars.<\/p>\n Africa is a continent comprising 54 countries and has a population of about 1.3 billion people of which Nigeria on the western coast is the most populated one. Incidentally India itself has a population of the same size. Africa is a multi lingual continent and has vast diversities \u2014 social, economic, racial and historical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":70777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[237,759,1218],"class_list":["post-142568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-africa","tag-india","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/india-africa-ravi.jpg\")
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