India’s growing presence in Southern Africa marks a bold recalibration of its continental ambitions, writes Rao Narender Yadav
India’s intensified engagement with Southern Africa marks a significant strategic shift in its Africa policy – one that recognizes the region as a pivotal arena in shaping India’s future resource security, maritime positioning, and global governance partnerships. President Droupadi Murmu’s state visits to Angola and Botswana, along with earlier high-level outreach to Namibia, signify more than diplomatic symbolism. They reflect New Delhi’s deliberate attempt to expand its geopolitical horizon toward a region increasingly central to its long-term developmental and strategic autonomy imperatives.
This emerging orientation is not limited to bilateral diplomacy. It is progressively embedded within the institutional frameworks of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Through this shift, India aims to transition from fragmented country-level interaction toward a more coherent, regionalised mode of partnership — one that reinforces collective development trajectories while supporting India’s aspirations in a reconfigured multipolar order.
Strategic Resources and Economic Security
As the world’s third-largest energy consumer and an expanding manufacturing hub for clean-energy technologies, India is turning toward Southern Africa’s diverse resource endowments to strengthen its economic security. Angola remains indispensable for diversification of India’s oil supplies beyond West Asia, and ongoing discussions on joint ventures in hydrocarbons and industrial infrastructure highlight a move from simple buyer–seller transactions to deeper structural engagement.
Namibia has gained importance as a reservoir of “future minerals” essential to India’s low-carbon transition, particularly uranium, lithium and rare earth elements. Collaborative initiatives in mining, exploration, and green hydrogen reflect a partnership aligned with the industrial and energy systems that will define the next phase of growth. Botswana, meanwhile, plays a key role in sustaining and upgrading India’s dominance in the global diamond industry. The emphasis is shifting toward integrating high-value processes, technology adoption, and skilling — enhancing India’s competitive edge across the gems and jewellery value chain.
Across these economies, India is designing economic partnerships that enhance resource resilience while reducing strategic vulnerabilities — a form of hedging that supports national autonomy in global supply chains.
Maritime Geopolitics: The Western Indian Ocean–South Atlantic Nexus
Southern Africa’s coastal geography creates a natural bridge between the Western Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic – two maritime theatres that are increasingly important to India’s strategic calculus. Strengthened naval exchanges, defence cooperation, and maritime domain awareness programmes with Angola and Namibia reflect an expanding effort to safeguard shipping routes that carry vital energy supplies and commercial goods. Emerging digital infrastructure, including undersea communication networks, adds a technological dimension to this maritime outreach.
By anchoring security partnerships along both the eastern and western edges of the continent, India is extending the Indo-Pacific conversation into spaces where global competition is intensifying. This positions New Delhi as a stabilising actor and a counterweight to the growing assertiveness of other major powers in African waters.
Multilateral Norms and the Global South Compact
India’s reoriented Southern African diplomacy reinforces its aspiration to serve as a leading voice of the Global South. The inclusion of the African Union into the G20 during India’s presidency has elevated continental representation and placed renewed expectations on India as a bridge-builder for more equitable global governance. Angola and Botswana’s alignment with India on United Nations Security Council reform and reforms of international financial institutions indicates a shift from issue-based convergence to broader institutional cooperation. Increasingly, these bilateral relationships are evolving into shared platforms to advocate structural rebalancing of the international order — moving South-South cooperation beyond symbolism and toward coordinated policy innovation. In the decades ahead, this regional engagement is poised to form a central pillar of India’s Africa policy and a key vector of its geopolitical identity in the Global South.
(Author is the Director, African Centre of India – an independent think-tank. Views are personal)