India, Africa reaffirm working on UNSC reforms

India and Africa on Thursday resolved to work together to bring about reform in the United Nations and use India's experience to develop small and medium enterprises in Africa.

"(India and Africa) reaffirm our strong commitment to work together for a comprehensive reform of the United Nations system, including its Security Council, to make it more regionally representative, democratic, accountable and effective," said a Framework Agreement on Strategic Cooperation adopted at the end of the third India-Africa Forum Summit meeting here.

The two sides also resolved to deepen ongoing cooperation and sharing of experiences in ensuring free, fair and transparent parliamentary and electoral processes, such as training and capacity building in tandem with current international best practices.

Both also emphasised their commitment to achieve sustainable prosperity and reaffirmed their collaboration to promote inclusive and sustainable growth for a decent life for their peoples.

"Both sides recognise that the Indian experience in small, medium and micro enterprises offers significant avenues for further cooperation in industrialisation, job creation and enhancement of local capacities of Africa, particularly in the field of managing and organising industrial clusters, and attaching them to the feeding industries," the framework agreement stated.

It was also "agreed to support establishment of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and medium and small industries (MSIs) in order to promote employment creation and income generation for people of both sides".

In the field of agriculture, both sides agreed to further increase cooperation in improving farming techniques through appropriate and affordable technology, organic farming, improving crop varieties, seeds, efficient use of fertilisers and other measures.

Both sides agreed to intensify their "ongoing cooperation in developing renewable energy generation, including solar, wind, hydro, geo-thermal and bio-mass along with building power transmission systems".

In cooperation in blue or ocean economy, both sides decided to put special emphasis "on exploring closer collaboration through training, capacity building and joint projects in developing sustainable fisheries, maritime connectivity, managing marine resources, exploring non-marine resources, promoting eco-tourism, developing renewable energy, and disaster risk reduction through modern early warning tools, pollution control and other coastal and ocean studies".

In the infrastructure sector, they agreed to intensify ongoing cooperation in training, capacity building, consultancy and project implementation through concessional credit in infrastructure areas, including water supply management, maritime connectivity, road and railway construction and upgrade.

In the health sector, both sides agreed to "collaborate in provision of universal access to primary and public healthcare, to build resilience to fight and prevent deadly epidemics and disease control through educational programme in this field, recommendation of policies, administering services and conducting research".

Both sides also agreed to establish a regular formal monitoring mechanism to review the implementation of the agreed areas of cooperation and identified projects by the competent bodies of the partnership.

"Modalities of the monitoring mechanism and the detailed plan of action will be jointly developed within three months".