INDIA hosts its biggest-ever Africa summit this week as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to challenge China’s dominance on a continent that is blessed with vast natural resources and has the world’s fastest-growing population.

    New Delhi wants to project its soft power and historical ties to Africa, in contrast to China’s focus on capital investment.

    Of the 54 countries invited, the hosts expect more than 40 to be represented by their heads of state and government who, after a series of ministerial meetings, will hold a full summit Thursday.

    India’s trading ties with Africa date back to antiquity and both found common cause in the struggle against colonial rule. Yet India’s influence faded over the course of the Cold War as it withdrew into non-aligned isolation.

    Now Modi, self-styled chief salesman of a “Make in India” export drive, wants to capitalize on an economic slowdown in China to highlight India as an alternative partner for trade and investment.

    “India is the fastest-growing major economy. Africa is experiencing rapid growth too,” Modi told African journalists on the eve of the summit.

    Although India’s headline economic growth has overtaken China’s, its economy is one-fifth the size and it lacks the financial heft to challenge China in a head-to-head contest for the African market.

    “We can’t match the Chinese in terms of resources — but any engagement we do with the Africans at least gives them a choice,” said C. Raja Mohan, a foreign policy commentator at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

    The India-Africa Forum Summit is the third of its kind and, since the first was held in 2008, two-way annual trade has more than doubled to US$72 billion.

    That lags trade between China and Africa, which has exploded to US$200 billion as the world’s No.2 economy sucks in oil, coal and metals to feed its industrial machine.

    India has been criticized by human rights groups for inviting Omar al-Bashir, the president of oil-rich Sudan wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur. For India, business comes first.

    State-run oil company ONGC, which has fields in Sudan and South Sudan, is on the hunt to buy US$12 billion in foreign assets over the next three years and has identified Africa as an investment target.

    India is also in talks with South Africa to buy coal mines producing up to 90 million tons of coking coal each year to feed its growing steel industry. (SD-Agencies)