In late March, five Nigerian students were attacked by a crowd after the death of a local teenager in a suspected case of drug overdose. The dead youth’s family blamed Nigerian students for supplying drugs to the deceased.
While India’s Minister for External Affairs had asked the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, in which Greater Noida falls, to inquire into the incident, the envoys from African called for an investigation by the UN Human Rights Council and are also seeking the intervention of the African Union. The recent incidents come after last year’s spate of attacks on Africans living in India. In one of the incidents, a Congolese man was beaten to death in Delhi over a dispute with an auto driver.
These attacks will invariably have an adverse impact on Indian attempts to enhance its presence in Africa, says Ajay Dubey, Professor at the Centre for African Studies at New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University.
“It will badly affect recent Indian initiatives to promote people-to-people ties under India-Africa forum summit initiatives,” he told Sputnik.
A major risk is that such attacks could erode India’s feasibility as a destination for higher education among African students. African students comprised 13% of India’s total foreign student population in 2013.
In 2015, as part of the Indo-African summit, India announced over 50,000 scholarships for African students for five years.
India and China are competing for a bigger pie in African trade although Beijing is way ahead of New Delhi. China is now Africa’s largest trading partner.
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