Do high-level international summits herald Africa's century?
James Wertsch, Shen Dingli and Swaran Singh say high-profile summits for Africa hosted by China, India and the United States reflect the continent's growing importance in trade and security issues
Africa today is one of the fastest growing regions in the world, blessed with abundant resources, virgin lands and fresh waters, and all major powers are busy cultivating the continent's new generation of ambitious and assertive democratic leaders.
India last week joined the special league with China and the United States in hosting a high-profile Third India-Africa Forum Summit attended by heads of state or government from 40 African nations. They were accompanied not just by their trade and foreign ministers and senior officials from all 54 African nations but also by heads of regional organisations and the African Union. This four-day jamboree brought forth not just the boisterous pomp and promise of bonding with each other but also underlined serious bilateral and regional perspectives for expanding their cooperation and working together in coming times.
That the major powers of China, India and the US are now courting it make it a prism through which strategic relations between the three can be better understood
Starting with the Arabs in 1977, the Japanese and Europeans have also hosted Africa summits but none of them match the scale of summits held by the US, China and India. Barack Obama, the first African-American president in the White House, hosted an equally grand inaugural US-Africa Leaders Summit last August and the next president is likely to hold its follow-up in 2017, if not earlier.
But the mother-of-all has been the five consecutive summits of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. The fact that the sixth one is happening in Johannesburg next month is already igniting comparisons between the major powers' efforts to engage Africa.
Already, 1.5 million overseas Chinese and 2.1 million Indians are living across the African continent, and dozens of African heads of state and senior officials are alumni of American educational institutions.
