It would be nice to see the Congolese riding the Tata Nano. But the India-Africa Forum Summit in Delhi should lead to more than just the forging and freeing of trade relations between India and the African countries. The Indian prime minister has invoked “inclusive globalization” as the vision behind his country’s relations with Africa. Olympian levels of abstraction are characteristic of such summits. So the Congolese president’s warning note that “words, speeches and promises” must be turned into “concrete action” and “visible projects” needs to be taken as more than counter-rhetoric. Two other voices should also be seriously reckoned with. First, the African Union chairman’s point that they were “not begging” and wanted “real funding” for development and democratization, and not a “cosmetic attitude”. Second, the Tanzanian president’s equally sharp reminder that India’s interest in Africa should be a long-term engagement, the motive for which should not be “to exploit the natural resources of the continent, make huge profits and run away”.

India and Africa may have had a shared history in the inequities of colonialism. But the hugely different distributions of resources and power in the post-colonial world should make India wary of taking that shared history for granted. Globalization creates its own inequalities, and within the new mappings of power, India will have to tread with ethical and political caution in setting itself up as Africa’s ‘benefactor’. It must remember that Africa is not a country but a continent of many countries, each of which demands a distinct understanding of poverty, disease, food security, corruption and political tyranny as well as economic promise and development. If India wants the world to see it in a foregrounded relation with the African Union, this is a more specific message to China too, for getting in there with Africa well before India did. Opening out its traffic, not just of commodities but also of knowledge, with the countries of the global South is also important for India. From trade to terrorism to the United Nations, from extended credit lines to duty-free market access, from oil prices to food security, India’s gesture to the African Union will have to break through its own rhetoric and address the changing roles of both in the modern world.