By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday urged the African Union (AU) to join the membership of G20 ahead of the bloc’s summit taking place in New Delhi next month.
The Group of 20 major economies consists of 19 countries and the European Union (EU). It makes up about 85 percent of global GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population.
South Africa is the only country in the African continent enjoying the membership of the bloc.
The calls comes days after the BRICS bloc, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa extended invitation to two African countries, Ethiopia and Egypt to join the group. They would join South Africa in becoming full members from January 1.
In December, US President Joe Biden said he wanted the African Union “to join the G20 as a permanent member”, adding that it had “been a long time in coming, but it’s going to come”.
On Sunday, Modi who is the current host of the group’s summit also called for inclusion of AU, a pan-African bloc, which collectively had a $3 trillion GDP last year.
“We have invited the African Union with a vision to give permanent membership,” Modi said at B20, a business forum and prelude to the September 9-10 G20 summit.
Modi also said India was the “solution” to creating an “efficient and trusted global supply chain” following disruptions during the coronavirus pandemic, with New Delhi working to bolster manufacturing to compete with China.
“The world before Covid-19 and after Covid-19 has changed a lot — the world cannot view the global supply chain as before,” Modi said.
“That is why today when the world is grappling with this question, I want to assure that the solution to this problem is India.”
Relations between the world’s two most populous nations nosedived after a deadly Himalayan border clash that killed 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese troops in 2020.
Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a rare face-to-face meeting on the sidelines of BRICS summit on Thursday, with Beijing saying they held “candid and in-depth” talks to ease tensions along their disputed frontier.
