One of the persistent weaknesses of the India-Africa Forum Summit has been the gap between commitment and delivery

The fourth India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS IV), scheduled for May 28-31, is a moment to rethink how India engages Africa in a rapidly changing world, and find ways to keep the relationship anchored in, but not dependent on, a summit.

IAFS IV was due in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a period of intense global diplomatic churn, resulted in a prolonged pause. Africa’s global partnerships have deepened and diversified since. The resumption must therefore contend with a far more competitive landscape. The European Union and Japan held summits with African partners in 2025, South Korea convened ministerial consultations. Germany hosted discussions on the Sudan crisis in April, and France is advancing its own outreach this month.

China continues its structured engagement through the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. In this crowded field, India retains significant goodwill, but the challenge is to convert historical affinity into sustained, structured, and visible engagement. The appointment of Mahamoud Ali Youssouf as chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC) signals an openness to reinvigorating partnerships.

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The five-year summit cycle remains useful at the leadership level, but in the absence of a robust inter-summit mechanism, engagement defaults to bilateral interactions. India’s earlier three-tier Africa framework, structured across bilateral, regional, and pan-African levels, remains conceptually sound. While implementation challenges limited its impact, abandoning it altogether would be erroneous. India could reinstate the practice of inviting the AUC chairperson for annual visits; the AU’s annually rotating Country Chair could be hosted for a state visit. This would deepen political engagement and ensure geographic diversity, bringing to the fore countries that may otherwise remain outside India’s bilateral radar.

With Burundi currently holding the AU Chair and co-chairing IAFS IV, such an approach would have been timely. Equally important is the need to re-engage Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs). An annual Track 1.5 India–Africa Strategic Dialogue could provide the missing layer of continuity, integrating policymakers, AUC leadership, representatives of the Permanent Representatives’ Committee (PRC), and domain experts from academia and industry.

The AUC plays a central role in shaping African positions on global issues, from climate change and energy transition to digital governance and AI. Engaging it would allow India to share its own development experience, particularly in areas such as digital public infrastructure, public health, financial inclusion, and capacity building. One of the persistent weaknesses of the IAFS has been the gap between commitment and delivery.

Periodic consultations between Indian officials and the African diplomatic corps in New Delhi could serve as an initial layer of monitoring, complemented by regular engagement in Addis Ababa, where India’s ambassador to the AU interacts with the AUC and the PRC. A more formal mid-cycle review would allow both sides to recalibrate priorities.

While many African countries view India as an accessible and adaptable partner, without consistent engagement, India risks being seen as an episodic rather than a strategic partner. While bilateral summits have continued, many of the broader IAFS initiatives, regional business forums, and collaborations in emerging sectors such as agriculture, renewable energy, climate finance, the digital economy, and counterterrorism have not been sufficiently institutionalised. IAFS IV could go beyond declaratory diplomacy and be more of a process-driven partnership.

In 2018, addressing the Ugandan Parliament, PM Narendra Modi articulated a key principle of India’s Africa policy: That African priorities would guide India’s engagement. IAFS IV is the moment to demonstrate that India’s engagement is not only historic but also contemporary, credible, and committed.

The writer is former ambassador to Ethiopia and the AU and author of The Harambee Factor

This was first published on The Indian Express 

The Mastercard Foundation, a Canadian organization, celebrated its 20th anniversary this week with its partners and young people. Under the Young Africa Works Strategy, the Foundation aims to enable 30 million young people (21 million young women) in Africa to access dignified and fulfilling work opportunities by 2030.
In Ethiopia, the Foundation opened its office in 2019, aiming to enable 10 million young people (7 million young women) to access dignified and fulfilling work opportunities by 2030.

A community week organized by the Foundation took place here in Addis from May 12-13, 2026. It involved partners working with the foundation to share lessons on what’s working well and the challenges they face.

What caught my attention was the important message from the Mastercard Foundation, Ethiopia Office, Country Director, Mefthe Tadesse: in her opening remarks, “Let’s fall in love with the impact we are making, not with the initiative we have started or our organization.”

In the development sector, we often love and value our organizations, the initiatives we’ve created, and the memorandum of understanding we’ve established; however, we seldom discuss the actual impact. All inputs, investments, processes, organizational working methods, funding, and other resources, including government-conducive policy environments, are all means to achieve the desired impact on our programs and initiatives. This has not been a success in its own, if it is not leading in bringing the intended impact in the ground.

Impact is what makes organizations, initiatives, and the numerous inputs they rely on meaningful. That is why she especially stressed the importance of falling in love with our impact.

Measuring the impact of our intervention requires attention to the collection and proper use of data from our programs. This will require adequate investments in monitoring, evaluation, data management, and learning. Programs that have strong data utilization capabilities can better demonstrate their impact with numbers. For example, an organization providing early childhood education will need to determine the cost of providing a one-year education to a child, including all necessary inputs. Conversely, it should also evaluate what $1 can provide to a child who has dropped out of school to help them continue their education.
Not only in education but also in employment programs, we face challenges in quantifying the resources required, say, to create self-employment opportunities for one young person. Measuring data and analyzing will give us an idea, which is also instrumental in defining value for money.
When we reach 70-80% of our project target, we celebrate because it marks a major achievement. We also highlight the challenges and explain why we didn’t reach 100%. Of course, one could argue that the rapidly changing environment we operate in, including factors like the evolving funding landscape, natural and man-made disasters, and government policies, directly affects the success of any intervention. We don’t have to be completely satisfied with this, and we will need to work toward reaching 100%.
The poverty, inequality, and injustice we aim to address require careful planning and risk assessment to ensure they are fully addressed.
What makes impact so critical is that, at our current rate, it will take 123 years to reach global gender equality, according to the World Bank. Based on current projections as of mid-2026, the world is not on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 1, which aims to end extreme poverty by 2030.
The numbers are strong indicators of why we must focus on impact now more than ever.