Contrary to prime minister Manmohan Singh's assertion at the just-concluded India-Africa Forum Summit last week, India is in competition with China for Africa's oil, precious metals, and minerals. But while China is engaged in unconcealed, neo-colonial resource extraction from Africa, which has already produced its backlash, India wishes to be – and has to be – gentler in its engagement with the  continent because of its own democracy and historical good relations with the African leadership.

In November 2006, China hosted its Africa summit and paraded more than forty African heads of government or state, not all of them elected. While the United States and the European Union were alarmed, India did not appreciate the full significance of the event, until months later, in February 2007, the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, visited eight African nations, ending with a high-profile stopover at the Indian Ocean island of Seychelles.

That revealed China's growing strategic interest in the Indian Ocean, through where most of its – and the world's oil – passes. This, together with China's "string of pearls strategy", to project naval power in the Indian Ocean through bases around India, finally awoke the Indian government to Chinese strategic and economic interests in Africa. While the Indian strategic establishment has been awed by the Chinese doctrine of "peaceful rise" or "peaceful development", it is unable or unwilling to accept its limitations as state policy for a democracy like India. For form's sake, nearly everyone in government and in the strategic community avers that India cannot do Chinese-style resource extraction in Africa. Privately, most all admire China's no-holds-barred approach. But it is unsustainable.

India's biggest strength which it underestimates overvaluing China's dictatorial approach is its democracy, and this is the commodity it must primarily export to Africa. The United States has abused the concept of exporting democracy, most lately in Iraq, and Europe's colonial exploitation of Africa has destroyed its case to speak for democracy there. India, in comparison, enjoys a far better image in Africa, due to Gandhi and Nehru's contributions to the continent's anti-colonial struggles, and there is appreciation that Indian communities settled in Kenya and Uganda were wrongly persecuted in the sixties and seventies. In this framework of democracy, India must strive to build strong market relations with Africa, understanding and sympathising that supply constraints from the African side will take many years of sustained efforts to overcome. 

But Chinese and other states' competition for African resources characterised by support for dictatorships, participating in and encouraging corruption, and looking the other way of tribal wars and sectarian cleansing, will unavoidably demand some hard-nosed approach from the Indian side. But in the past, the Indian government has not been the most ideal mediator in such situations, in part because it is wedded to democracy, and has international commitments to meet and an image to protect. Both regarding Burmese natural gas and Central Asian oil and gas, for example, the Indian state sector has failed badly compared to China's. China's veto power in the UN Security Council and as an NPT-recognized nuclear great power gives it incomparable heft vis-à-vis India. 

India's trump card is its private sector, presently boasting an unprecedented international reputation. Indian businesses like Tata, Kirloskar, Jindal, Sonalika, etc, put up a good show at the two-day India-Africa Forum Summit. The market view of Africa is sober. "GDP growth," says Ajai Chowdhury of HCL Infosystems, "is linked to the number of telephone, internet and PC users in a country. We can help Africa in land records, taxes, agriculture, crime control and national identity card projects, banking and power projects." Adds Shipra Tripathi of the Confederation of Indian Industry, "Agriculture will have some big-ticket projects (for Africa) but much of the success…will depend on the follow up."

In sum, while China's mammoth presence in Africa for resources has spurred India to follow, its own engagement has to be democratic, equitable, and a model for the rest of the world to emulate. Soft power is key to India's success. At the same time, the government has to craft a strategic vision for Africa, bringing the military, industry, the state sector, and analysts into the thinking process. On issues like military, energy and food security, India has to be bold, innovative, determined, but democratic. Africa is a good place to start.