to study and replicate India’s unique electronic voting system. India’s vibrant base of local government institutions and its independent judicial system based on the rule of law are two other areas in which India can share its unique expertise through technical cooperation, thus responding to specific African interests and, at the same time, outflank China.

Diplomacy: Southern power

China and India are both situated in the Northern Hemisphere, but paradoxically are also competing ferociously to become leaders of the “Global South”, be it during the trade negotiations at Doha or, more recently, at the climate change summit in Copenhagen. But as a traditional “bridging” or “positive power”, India has a distinct advantage: in stark contrast to the radical ideological and interventionist Chinese moves during the 1950s and 1960s, Delhi playedof the old time Africanist diplomats who served in the Ministry of External Affairs have retired over the last decade.

Diaspora: the privileged access channel

A final potential advantage resides in the cultural proximity between Africa and India. The large Indian diaspora plays a vital factor in this regard: a 2001 estimate identified close to one hundred thousand Indian citizens residing in Africa, with more than half in Eastern and Southern Africa. On top of this more recent immigrant community, there are more than one million people of Indian origin who have settled in Africa for many generations (close to one million in South Africa; 25,000 in Madagascar; 15,000 in Zimbabwe; and 8,000 in Nigeria).

Unlike the more recent and radically segregated Chinese “labour diaspora” that has often led to frictions