How new defence wings in Indian embassies in Africa provide strategic edge

India has taken its Indo-Pacific policy through ‘Security and Growth for All in the Region’ (SAGAR) to clearly include the coasts of southern and eastern Africa within its ambit. Image: REUTERS/Alet Pretorius/Pool

The welcome announcement that the location of defence advisors (DA) in Indian embassies abroad has been reconsidered, leading to reassignments, is a sign that India is taking its strategic vision seriously. Of particular importance is the attention paid to Africa.

Since 2018, after PM Modi made his ‘Africa is our priority’ policy speech at the Ugandan Parliament, India has proceeded to establish 18 new embassies in Africa. Most of these have already opened.

Besides, India has taken its Indo-Pacific policy through ‘Security and Growth for All in the Region’ (SAGAR) to clearly include the coasts of southern and eastern Africa within its ambit. Add to this the meetings of defence ministers of African countries and countries of the Indian Ocean region held over the last few years, and you see a pattern of trying to intensify the strategic engagement with Africa, particularly with countries in eastern and southern Africa, which impinge on the Indian Ocean.

Under the latest reassignments, new positions of defence advisors are likely in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Tanzania, Mozambique, and the Ivory Coast. They will augment the existing four defence advisors in Africa: Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria. What do these signify? The creation of a new position in Addis Ababa, which is also the headquarters of the African Union, means that India, with a long-standing military engagement with Ethiopia, will now also have a possible engagement at the strategic level with the African Union Commission.

This was missing over the years when India intensified its engagement with the AU Commission. India had established a military academy in Harar in 1958 and had a military training team in Ethiopia from 2009 to 2014.

Given Ethiopia’s new energetic role in the region, this is a good move. The new Indian Mission in Djibouti, strategically located at the confluence of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, will also get a new defence advisor.

This will augment the strength of the small mission. Earlier, the defence adviser in Egypt covered both Ethiopia and Djibouti, but now there would be three in this important region alone. Djibouti is the nodal point from which piracy in the region is often viewed. It has military bases in France, the US, Japan, and China and is the headquarters of the ‘Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa’ (CJTHOA). Though India has not been directly associated with the CJTHOA, perhaps that would now be reconsidered.

India already has a defence wing in the mission in the High Commission in Kenya, which was originally in Tanzania, where India had established a defence training college. Now, given the interest that Tanzania has evinced in closer defence engagement with India and the joint statement on maritime security introduced during the visit of the Tanzanian president to India last year, it is a good time to have our defence wing reintroduced in Dar es Salaam.

Tanzanian interest in purchasing Indian military hardware at appropriate prices is clear and needs to be pursued. This could also be an objective with Ethiopia, whose military machine is in need of revitalisation and resupply.

The defence advisor in Kenya continues to be accredited to the Seychelles, while with Mauritius, there has been an Indian deployment for a long time, perhaps obviating the need for a separate defence advisor. Further down the coastline, the introduction of a new defence wing at the High Commission in Mozambique is indeed welcome.

Mozambique has one of the best-growing strategic partnerships with India, sharing a common vision of SAGAR, having substantial Indian investments in gas and coal, and training teams from India. India has already supplied military equipment to Mozambique, and the chances of turning this into an export destination of higher order are bright.

With these four new defence wings in missions from Ethiopia to Mozambique, the entire region from Egypt to South Africa is now well covered, indicating that the Indian Ocean, both directly as part of SAGAR and as part of India’s Indo-Pacific policy, will be diligently served for strategic heft over the next few years.

The fifth new addition in Africa is in Ivory Coast, which will augment the lone position in Abuja, Nigeria. Ivory Coast is one of the stable countries undergoing reconstruction and could also be a good market for Indian export capabilities. With these deployments, the only places left out are Uganda, where India has a military mission, Rwanda, and Madagascar and Comoro, countries in the Indian Ocean region.

While we welcome these deployments for strategic reasons, there is also a need for better coordination in the roles of the DAs. For many years, the position of the Indian defence wings in African countries suffered from a lack of concurrent accreditation with countries covered by the Embassy in which they were located.

There was also a lack of coverage of countries where Indian contingents under the UN peacekeeping operations were deployed, and there was a lack of coverage of the standby brigades of regional communities. These could now be covered from Djibouti, which hosts the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD); Tanzania, which hosts the East African Community (EAC); Abuja, where Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is located; and Botswana, where Southern African Development Community (SADC) is located.

It is important that Indian defence wings in nearby missions are given the responsibilities to deal with countries where the local ambassador is accredited, where Indian peacekeeping missions are deployed, and where the standby brigades of regional communities have their headquarters.

It is evident that enhancing defence exports is a major task given to defence missions, particularly in Africa. It is quite possible that the role of each of these missions would be judged on their ability to obtain access for Indian defence exports to the countries.

While welcoming this exercise, it is necessary to have a dynamic approach and allow the DA’s greater flexibility to work on countries neighbouring their own, in line with the accreditation of the resident missions, or where local ambassadors believe that opportunities can be tapped.

Like an ambassador, a defence adviser also requires the concurrence of the host country, and it is important to give each defence attache a proper representation to cover not only the defence part but also the strategic aspects of India’s overall Africa policy.

This integration of the DAs into India’s robust Africa policy will prove to be more meaningful since defence acquisitions in African countries are quite political and require strong lobbying at high levels with added incentives of economic cooperation.

The writer is a former ambassador to Germany, Indonesia, Ethiopia, ASEAN and the African Union. He tweets @AmbGurjitSingh. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.