India not a competitor, but partner to Africa: Envoy

ABUJA: India is a partner to Africa and is not competing with any other country to invest in the resource-rich continent, the High Commissioner to Nigeria Mahesh Sachdev has said.

Addressing scholars at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in Lagos, he said, India operates with a paradigm that is unique to the Asian country.

"Indian companies like Airtel decide to invest in Africa on their own and it may not be apt to say there is the monolith of India scrambling with ex-monolith or present monolith.

"We are partners and would like to remain partners," he said amid efforts by the West to pit India and China against each other in the mineral-rich continent.

Chinese presence has grown rapidly in the African countries mainly concentrated on large infrastructure projects like roads and railways while India is assisting in capacity-building, agriculture, floriculture as also small business which is scattered around.

India, whose relations with Nigeria predates the country's independence, interacts with individual countries and also involve in regional engagements, the top Indian diplomat said.

According to Sachdev, the key drivers of the ties between the two nations were high mutual familiarity and respect, similarities and complementarities, compatible and cost-effective solutions, appropriate and proven technology, and easy sustainability and up-scaling.

Additional factors were a win-win approach, multiple options within India's free market and uncomplicated people-to-people process, he said.

The current picture of India-Nigeria ties depict close political interface at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), he said.

The envoy said Nigeria was India's biggest trading partner in Africa with a figure standing at USD 12.6 billion in 2010-11, while it also became the largest investor in the African country in 2010 with USD 5 billion.

India is also the largest employer of labour with more than 100 companies in Nigeria and the country should expect incoming projects in power, petro-chemical and health sector, he said.