New Delhi has often been accused of mimicking Beijing in Africa. No one disputes the fact that India’s Africa summit follows that of China, which held a much grander conclave with African leaders in Beijing at the end of 2006.

To be sure, the simultaneous rise of China and India does create some basis for the comparison of their international performance. Nor can anyone deny that the rapid economic growth in China and India is steadily expanding their international diplomatic footprints that now include Africa.

Beyond these facts, the comparison of Indian and Chinese engagement of Africa becomes untenable. For one, India and China are coming to Africa from very different starting points. This is partly due to the fact that the Indian Ocean had linked the subcontinent with Africa for centuries in ways that China was not.

Even in the age of imperialism, India was deeply involved in Africa, from Indian capitalists, especially from Gujarat who traded with the continent, to the Indian troops who were part of the British colonial ventures there. If Mahatma Gandhi’s long sojourn in Africa was enabled by diasporic links, he also contributed to the political awakening of both the regions. Independent India was in the forefront of the anti-apartheid and anti-colonial struggles of Africa.

After decolonisation, New Delhi’s relations with the continent included some difficult moments when people of Indian origin were expelled from parts of Africa. Much like its past, India’s future in Africa is bound to be different from that of China.

While China’s purposeful engagement of Africa has caught the world’s attention in recent years, India has been quietly raising its own profile in the continent. India’s Africa summit can be traced back to the NDA government, which launched the “Focus Africa” and the Team Nine initiatives in the early years of this decade. India’s trade with the region has steadily expanded, although in a less dramatic manner than that between China and Africa. The Indian private sector, on its own steam, has been making major advances in the continent.

Over the last decade, India has also been part of the many recent international activities in Africa — including the UN peacekeeping operations and global development initiatives.

The comparison becomes especially facile when the Western charges of neo-colonialism against China are extended towards India. These arguments stem from the growing anxiety in the West that its domination of Africa might be coming to an end amidst the rising influence of China and India. Beijing and New Delhi have provided economic options that Africans did not have until now and promise to alter the geopolitical landscape of the continent.

The former European colonial powers and the United States tend to lecture the African states on human rights and good governance. Their aid is tied to a whole range of political conditionalities. Africans are fed up with Western paternalism in Africa and are eager for a diversification of their international relations.

This does not mean there is no African discontent with the burgeoning economic relationship with China. Beijing has been accused of an obsession with resource extraction in Africa. China has also been criticised for dumping its cheap manufactured goods in Africa and destroying local jobs. In implementing its projects, the Chinese state-owned companies bring their own labour and curtail opportunities for local employment.

Despite “losing” some major resource contracts to China, India has consciously avoided many elements of the China model in Africa. It has neither imported Indian labour into Africa nor has it sought to undermine the local industry. It has placed special emphasis on capacity building and human resource development. New Delhi has also focused on the transfer of intermediate technologies and facilitating the development of agriculture and related industries in Africa.

The biggest contrast between the two Asian giants in Africa comes from the character of their respective strategies. China’s engagement is state-driven while the private sector leads India’s. Those who are attracted to the Chinese model have criticised India for the lack of greater governmental initiative.

This criticism ignores the nature of the beast that modern India is. Its engagement with any region in the world today tends to be disaggregated, widely dispersed and less dominated by the government. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Although seemingly less efficient, India’s Africa policy is more broad-based and capable of high endurance. The Indian private sector is also more sensitive to local risks that the state-driven Chinese strategy is not always good at managing.

India has no reason to benchmark itself against China in Africa. Nor should it agonise over China’s presumed “lead”. Instead, India has the opportunity to develop its own model for sustainable cooperation with Africa.

Central to such a strategy must be the recognition that African elites are smart enough to figure out their own long-term interests. It is only by respecting Africa’s desire to build its own future and underlining absolute equality that India can differentiate itself from both the West and China.

The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg