New Delhi: India and Ethiopia are in the final stages of clinching a defence cooperation agreement that will see New Delhi help the African nation with military training and credit lines to shore up defences, ThePrint has learnt.
Demeke Atnafu, the ambassador of Ethiopia to India, told ThePrint on the sidelines of a conference organised by the Observer Research Foundation that the agreement is likely to be signed only after the general elections in India.
While this will be the maiden agreement, India and Ethiopia have had a history of cooperation in defence since the 1950s.
It was reinforced in 2023 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia agreed to deepen relations and expand bilateral cooperation in areas, including defence, in a meeting during BRICS in Johannesburg.
In October 2022, the Ethiopian defence minister Abraham Belay attended the India-Africa Defence Dialogue held on the sidelines of DefExpo in October 2022 in Gandhinagar. During the visit, Belay also held a meeting with his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh, and discussed bilateral defence cooperation.
This is part of India’s strong push for defence cooperation in Africa. India has been wooing Africa for quite a few years now and has already made inroads into the continent with sale of certain air defence systems, small arms, anti-drone technology, firing range simulators, among others.
As reported earlier, India has extended a line of credit touching nearly $14 billion to 42 nations in the African Union and is looking at increasing the funds to support the defence capacity of countries in the region, besides traditional sectors like railways, ports and roads.
In the 1950s, India played a central role in the establishment of the Harar Military Academy in Ethiopia. The then Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie had requested India to assist in the establishment of the academy after a visit to the National Defence Academy (NDA) in Khadakwasla, Pune in 1956.
Brigadier N.C. Rawlley prepared a study for the Ethiopian government on the academy project. Rawlley was appointed the first Commandant of the Harar Military Academy. The second and third Commandants of the military academy were also from India, according to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.
India also sent a nine-member Indian Army training team in 2009 to the Major General Hayelom Araya Military Academy at Holleta, Ethiopia, for a three-year assignment.
Sources in the defence establishment said that the cooperation with the African country will involve multiple training programmes and also help with a credit line for capacity building.
It is not just India that is focusing on Africa. China has also been focusing on deepening its own defence cooperation with Africa. According to Boston University’s Global Development Centre, the nation has, between 2000 and 2020, publicly signed 27 loan deals with eight African countries worth about $3.5 billion for defence spending.
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Cooperation in UPI, digital technologies and business
Speaking at a discussion hosted by thinktank Observer Research Foundation on Tuesday, Atnafu said New Delhi and Addis Ababa were also working on an agreement to work together on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
In November 2023, during the sixth India-Ethiopia Joint Trade Committee held in Addis Ababa, India had invited collaboration between UPI and the Ethiopian national payments system EthSwitch.
“We are looking to India as a partner for contributing to Digital Ethiopia 2025 — our plan to transform the digital infrastructure of the country,” said Atnafu in response to a question from ThePrint.
He added: “Our national digital identity card programme is already being built by a company from Bengaluru.”
In February 2022, the Ethiopian National Identity Program rolled out the enrollment process for its digital identity card — Fayda ID, according to Abren, a Washington-based Ethiopian think-tank.
Fayda, is a 12-digit unique identification number, leveraging the Modular Open-Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), incubated at the International Institute of Informational Technology (IIIT) Bangalore.
Atnafu also pointed out that business ties between India and Ethiopia, amounting to roughly $2.8 billion annually, were poised for a boost. He highlighted that over the past six months, five different business delegations from India, covering sectors such as IT, ICTs and pharmaceuticals, have visited the country.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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