New era of partnership expected in India-Africa summit: Modi

New Delhi: The third India-Africa Forum Summit, which will see the participation of all African nations for the first time, will launch a new era of mutual partnership, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Speaking to African Journalists at the editors forum of the third India-Africa Forum summit on Friday, Modi said India will focus on human resource development, institution building, infrastructure, clean energy, agriculture, health, education and skill development.

"The summit would set substantially higher targets for our development partnership", he added.

India will provide necessary help to hasten the development program of the African countries, Modi said adding, the summit will also address key challenges of present times including food, health and environmental security.

"We will create conditions that stimulate trade and investment flow between our countries. We will work together to address the problems of climate change. We will explore new areas like a sustainable blue economy. We hope to learn a great deal from numerous African success stories," he said.

"We will also reinforce our partnership on the global platform and deepen our security cooperation, including on maritime security, countering terrorism," he said.

The Prime Minister said apart from the political and economic relation both the countries had a very rich cultural tradition.

Modi said, this is the first summit where all the 54 countries of Africa have been invited and all of them are participating.

"Till now as per the information that we have received, 40 countries will be represented by the head of state, head of government level, and the rest are being represented by senior ministers," he said, adding the summit was attracting the attention of the entire world.

He said there were many similarities between India and Africa and together we represent one third of the world's population. "Africa represents the youngest region in the world and India too is the youngest country."

He said that the bilateral trade between India and Africa has grown by eight to nine times in the past few years and India has given concessional credit to the tune of $7.4 billion.

"In more than 40 countries today there are more than 100 projects which are under implementation. Noting that India has invested $1.2 billion in more than 100 institutes", Modi said, adding, "the point which makes me the most happy is that there is this partnership between India and Africa that is human resource development, the capacity building."

The Prime Minister said in recent years Africa has been developing in a very significant manner and around 95 percent of Africa comes under mobile network.

(With inputs from IANS)