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WORLDVIEW
The world's fastest growing economies
The African Continental Free Trade
Area Agreement (AfCFTA) – the Forecast GDP growth, 2017
54-country trade bloc which came into Ethiopia 8.3%
force on 30 May 2019 and which is ex- Uzbekistan 7.6%
pected to boost intra-African trade Nepal 7.5%
by elimination of import duties and
non-tariff barriers, providing opportu- India 7.2%
nities for expansion of trade ties – will Tanzania 7.2%
make Africa, in terms of the number of Djibouti 7%
countries participating, the world’s larg-
est free trade zone since the establish- Laos 7%
ment of the World Trade Organisation, Cambodia 6.9%
in 1994. India views this development Myanmar 6.9%
as a vast opportunity to boost trade and
economic ties with Africa, as do many Philippines 6.9%
other countries. Source: World Bank
INDIA-AFRICA MILLENNIA-OLD BONDS
FRICA and India are separated by
the Indian Ocean. The geograph-
Aical proximity between the Horn
of Africa and the Indian subcontinent has
played an important role in the develop-
ment of the relationship since ancient
times.
Little is known about contacts made
between Indians and Africans before
the first century CE. The only surviving
source, Periplus Maris Erythraei (Periplus
of the Erythraean Sea) – which dates to the
mid-first century – refers to trade relations
between the Kingdom of Aksum (modern
day in Northern Ethiopia) and Ancient
India around the first millennium. Helped
by the monsoon winds, merchants traded
cotton, glass beads, and other goods in ex-
change for gold and soft-carved ivory. The
influence of Indian architecture on the Af-
rican kingdom shows the level of trade de-
velopment between the two civilisations.
Under Ptolemaic rule, Ancient Egypt
dispatched two trade delegations to In-
dia. The Greek Ptolemaic dynasty and
India had developed bilateral trade using
the Red Sea and Indian ports. Controlling
the western and northern end of other
A young MK Gandhi in South Africa trade routes to Southern Arabia and In-
58 l INDIAN ENGINEERING EXPORTS l AUGUST 2019
