Asian member country of the African Union’s Capacity Building Foundation. And India’s Technical and Economic Cooperation programme (ITEC) has seen such success among the thousands of African students and diplomats who have chosen India for training since the 1960s, that it is now undergoing rapid expansion.

Location: proximity and overlapping security interests

There are no direct flights linking Johannesburg with Shanghai or Beijing, but Mumbai is less than nine hours away from this major South African air hub. And the only direct flight connecting Ethiopia to Beijing stops over in New Delhi. Connected by the Western Indian Ocean, India and Africa share a geographical proximity and several contact points that need to be explored.

Instead, it is on the East African coast that India faces a specific advantage as a potentialsecurity provider. The piracy threat along the Somali and East African coast, often stretching wide across the ocean, offers the Indian Navy a superb opportunity to develop its blue water ambitions. By keeping these crucial sea lanes of communication and strategic chokepoints (including the Gulf of Aden and the Mozambique channel) secure, and by developing the naval capabilities of the East African states through increased joint exercises, creation of new listening posts, and the supply of vessels, India will increase its delivery capacity and assume a strategic position, at least in the East African security context.

India’s recent initiative to host the first annual Indian Ocean Naval Symposium in Delhi (from which China was excluded), as well as its commitment to revive the moribund Indian Ocean Rim Association for