Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit Ethiopia on December 16–17 as part of a three-day outreach tour to the Middle East and Africa, following his stop in Jordan, according to The Indian Times.
The visit aims to build on India’s recent diplomatic initiatives and strengthen partnerships across West Asia and Africa. It will be the first visit by an Indian prime minister to Ethiopia in more than a decade, the last being Manmohan Singh’s trip in 2011.
According to WION, Modi’s visit will focus on development cooperation and deepening India–Africa ties. In Addis Ababa, he will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, continuing the dialogue they began on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit.
Discussions are expected to cover trade, investment, defence, information technology, agriculture, youth skills development, and people-to-people exchanges.
The visit could help revive momentum for the long-delayed fourth India–Africa Forum Summit; the last summit was held in New Delhi in 2015, preceded by the 2011 edition hosted in Ethiopia.
India has extended significant concessional lines of credit to Ethiopia, covering sugar, infrastructure, possibly power transmission, railways, etc. And other capacity-building initiatives have trained Ethiopians over the years.
