Johannesburg, March 10 India has a significant role to play in reshaping the post-World War II world order, which is on the verge of collapse, South African Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry Zuko Godlimpi told a gathering of business leaders, academics, and policymakers in Pretoria on Monday.
The minister was delivering the keynote address at the 2nd annual India-South Africa Business Conclave, organized jointly by the High Commission of India and the CII-India Business Forum.
Godlimpi said that independent India was born two years after World War II ended, amid the global trade system architecture created by the West.
"India emerged as a young democracy in a world that was already being shaped by major powers," he said.
Commenting on India's plans to become a dominant world force by the time of its centenary of independence in 2047, the minister said that India is now in a uniquely different position.
"India will find itself in a position where, as opposed to inheriting a world order, it is now inheriting the task of being a co-creator of another world order," he said.
"India emerged as a junior partner in that (post-World War II order), but it now has to contend with the reality that it is sitting in a position that obliges it to act as a senior partner in the remaking of that order, when you see it dithering on the brink of collapse," he said.
Godlimpi said that India and South Africa are not merely trading partners.
"We are strategic partners in development, industrialization, and global economic reform," the minister said, as he jested about how the two countries are referred to at the World Trade Organization as the "Terrible Twins" because their representatives are always outspoken about fostering change in the interests of the Global South.
"In all discussions about global development, South Africa and India insist on defending the strategic perspective of the Global South, on the principles of fair and equitable international trade, and that the views of the developing world must be taken as seriously as those countries with much bigger economic muscle," he said.
In that context, the relationship between India and South Africa is not just an economic one of trade exceeding USD 12 billion annually, but also a moral, political, and technological one.
Before outlining the areas in which South Africa and India could cooperate to find mutual benefit, Godlimpi reminded the business sector that his country serves as a gateway to the African continent's market of more than 1.3 billion (130 crore) people.
He said that India's growth to advance from its current position as the world's fourth-largest economy in the next two decades would depend on the country having to rely increasingly on other economic partners than the ones that it had traditionally relied on.
Turning to the sectors that could be prioritized for investment and cooperation, Godlimpi highlighted these as renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, agro industries, and information technology.
Recalling how India had come to the aid of Africa when the West was stockpiling COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic in 2020, Godlimpi said that India has a huge pharmaceutical advantage.
"In Africa, we have about 600 pharmaceutical companies across the continent. India has about 10,000. Because of that, India becomes a natural partner for Africa, which is hungry for increased Foreign Direct Investment coming from India to build that pharmaceutical capability on the continent," he said.
On critical minerals, Godlimpi said that the focus in most African countries is shifting from just extracting and exporting them from Africa to local beneficiation.
"The nature of the drift in global politics and global trade dynamics is such that configuration of supply change around critical minerals could in the next 15 years be of the format that India's rise could be contained if it does not have sustainable access to those critical minerals," Godlimpi cautioned as he advised India to establish supply-chain partnerships with African countries around critical minerals.