Result-oriented action plan needed to realise India-Africa

African envoys today urged India to have a "result-oriented" action plan for translating into action promises made during the India-Africa Summit last year.
Rawandan High Commissioner Ernest Rwamucyo sought more clarification on the assurances made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the summit.
He also urged for a fast-track decision-making process for ongoing projects.
"If we look at the summit in October and if we look at where we are today, we should be cautious that we might be losing some crucial time to come up with a well result- oriented agreed plan of action with African countries and India.

"We need to work together and have a result-oriented plan of action for implementation, we need more efficient fast-track decision-making process for the projects that are already on-going," Rwamucyo said.
He said, Modi had announced to his fellow heads of states commitment of USD 10 billion line of credit, this is in addition to ongoing commitment.

"This is very important and we need to keep an eye on it. There is USD million 600 in grant. This is not huge amount of money, but it is significant," he said.
Rwamucyo said over 50,000 scholarships were also announced.
"This also has to be well-defined because when you talk about scholarships there is a difference between short-term capacity building programmes while scholarship is a knowledge- based programme, say a useful engineering degree, a useful masters degree in agriculture, automation," Rwamucyo said.

Mbuya Issac Munlo, High Commissioner of Republic of Malawi and SADC (Southern African Development Community) Head of Groups Mission, emphasised on flexibility of EXIM guidelines as it delays the project. He said the terms and conditions of EXIM are more or less similar to IMF and the World Bank.
Munlo also highlighted the case of trade imbalance between India and Africa and "paradigm shift" is required in dealing with the problem.