IIFT inaugurates African business cell

After focusing on the Indian market, the Delhi-based Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) is now spreading its wings. The institute recently inaugurated its Africa Business Cell to bring business leaders to India to promote partnerships and encourage entrepreneurship.

“The Africa cell is completely a students’ initiative as for far too long, the world has been overlooking the significance of Africa. To a large extent, the misconceptions surrounding Africa today are similar to the ones that surrounded India in the past,” says K T Chacko, director, IIFT.

The cell will focus on two activities — to bring African business leaders to Delhi for promoting partnerships and schemes involving India and second, to do live projects in Africa so that students get an opportunity to work there. The major business opportunities in Africa would be in agricultural commodities sourcing and trading, consumer goods, oil and natural gas, automobiles, education and healthcare.

IIFT has also been actively involved with the Ministries of External Affairs and Commerce to set up an African Institute of Foreign Trade in the continent. “Discussions are on and we have given the ministries our inputs on academic linkages and faculties for the African institute that will be set up on the same lines as IIFT. In fact, this will be India’s contribution to Africa,” says Chacko.

The potential is huge. Last year, India called for doubling the India-Africa bilateral trade to the level of $70 billion over a five-year period, continuing the growth trajectory that began in 2000-01, when trade was a mere $3 billion. It shot up to $36 billion in 2007-08. In April 2008, India had announced a duty-free tariff preferential scheme for 49 least developed countries (LDCs) which has benefited 33 African countries.

African leaders have often called for boosting investments in agriculture, mining, power, agro-processing, irrigation, pharmaceuticals, IT, health, retail chain and small- and medium-scale sector for generating employment.