What India's partnership with the AU means for Africa
Consistent with Modi's message of 'cooperation without conditions', he elucidated how, in the name of development partnerships, nations were forced into dependence partnerships, which gave rise to colonial and imperial rule and global power blocks.
Now what does this mean for the 54 countries in the African Union and Angola, which is the second largest supplier of oil and the current AU chair?
Of course, India's defining watershed moment was the Presidency of the G20 under Modi, where he advocated and secured permanent membership of the AU in the G20, which was a pivotal moment for the India-Africa relationship.
The question that many pundits have been asking is, how this 'partnership of equals' between Africa and India would play out, especially in the mid of the turbulent geo-political trade wars between China and the United States, which have exposed how countries in the Global South are merely spectators in the global trade eco-system.
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These agreements have advantages but often lack the clear mandates or oversight mechanisms expected of multilateral agreements. Human rights abuses can go unchecked without such rules of engagement and legal accountability, perhaps even more than has happened under multilateral missions. In Mozambique, the SAMIM forces were credibly accused of burning insurgent remains, although the subsequent investigation is still said to be ongoing. While multilateral oversight does not guarantee accountability, by sidelining regional frameworks altogether, it is unclear where the burden of oversight resides. This greatly weakens external scrutiny, particularly as missions overrun their original timelines or mandates. Missions exceeding initial timelines also risk dependency. Mozambique's reliance on Rwandan troops has grown significantly since 2021, with little sign of a coherent exit strategy or meaningful local security capacity being developed in parallel. When foreign forces play such a central role in stabilisation missions, the host state may come to defer their governance responsibilities rather than develop them. Rwanda's role of peacekeeper, counterinsurgent and stabiliser has blurred traditional categories of external intervention in an already neglected province of Mozambique. At the risk of entrenching a model prioritising stability over sustainability, it needs to be asked whether bilateral agreements are enough to deliver security gains or if local capacity building and governance reform should also be on the agenda. A reconfiguration of Africa's security governance, where bilateral deployments and coalitions of the willing are increasingly being perceived as more capable and credible than multilateral interventions, suggests that other capable states may seek to emulate these results, especially when lucrative commercial opportunities form part of the agreement. Although Rwanda's successes in Cabo Delgado have garnered a fair amount of attention, its model may not be easily replicable. Few African militaries possess the combination of professionalism, logistical capability and reputational capital that Kigali has cultivated to market itself as a security partner. Rwanda's playbook may very well be an outlier and not a trendsetter, although the possibility of other states seeking out similar strategies cannot be ruled out. As more states consider bilateral partners, Africa could enter an era of hybrid security governance, where formal regional mechanisms coexist with bilateral agreements. These agreements will probably exist between states with capable militaries and receptive host states and carry not only the risk of fragmentation but also of entrenching personalised security politics and dependency. If hybrid security agreements are to become the new normal, Africa must urgently debate the norms, rules and red lines that will govern their use. Erika van der Merwe is a research intern with the peace and security programme at Good Governance Africa. She is pursuing a master's in international relations at the University of Cape Town, specialising in security studies.
