BUSHMEN AND THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALISM

Three stories of the ongoing tribulations of the Kalahari Bushmen in Botswana

1.

It has been estimated that the so-called Bushmen of the Kalahari have lived in southern Africa for at least 20,000 years, but that cuts no ice with the zealots hell-bent on the development of capitalism in that part of the world.

"The Bushmen of the Kalahari – among Africa’s last indigenous peoples – are on the verge of losing their ancestral homeland after the Government of Botswana stepped up a campaign to force them into squalid resettlement camps" (Times, 12 September). The government has sent heavily armed wildlife guards into the Central Kalahari Game reserve – an area that had been promised to the Bushmen "in perpetuity". Their aim is to remove some 200 to 250 Gana and Gwi who have returned there from the resettlement camps. The Times report continues: "Stephen Corry, director of Survival International, which has been highlighting the Bushmen’s plight, said: ‘The Government seems hell-bent on finishing them off this time. The situation is very urgent. Unless circumstances change through outside intervention, this could very well be the end of these particular people’".

The plight of the Gana and Gwi people is by no means unique. The development of capitalism crushes all the tribal societies it comes into contact with. In the past we have had the slaughter of the native Americans in the USA, the butchery of the Australian aborigines and more recently of the Yanomami in Northern Brazil. The concept of a tribal society that lives by gathering and hunting with no recourse to capitalism’s markets is anathema to a property-based social system.

The Botswana government has destroyed the tribal wells and banned hunting in its efforts to restrict tribal groups. The growth of farming and diamond mining probably lie behind the government’s recent actions. Some government ministers have hinted that the evictions are needed because deposits of diamonds have been found in the area, although the state diamond company, which is an offshoot of De Beers claim they are uneconomic to mine. "However, De Beers does not rule out mining them at a later date."

The development of capitalism in Africa must crush tribal communities just as it did in Europe and America . The only hope for a communal life-style is not a return to primitive tribal society, but the transformation of present day private property, profit-producing society into the new social system of world socialism.

2.

January 2007 , Bushmen began returning to their ancestral lands inside Botswana's largest game reserve this weekend, despite what their supporters describe as a heavy police presence and attempts to persuade them to stay in relocation camps. The Bushmen have lived in southern Africa for more than 20,000 years and are thought by some experts to be one of the oldest--if not the oldest--people on the planet, in genetic terms.

Basarwa tribesmen, also known as Bushmen, won a court order in December allowing them to return to land in the massive Central Kalahari Game Reserve, which, at 52,800 square kilometers, is larger than the nations of Denmark and Switzerland.In its ruling, Botswana's High Court called the government's eviction of the Basarwa "unlawful and unconstitutional" and said that they had the right to live on their ancestral land inside the reserve. The court also ruled that the Basarwa who live in Botswana have the right to hunt and gather in the reserve . But the harassment continues - the government continues to dispute the Bushmen's return, maintaining that only the 189 people who filed the lawsuit would be given automatic right of return with their children--well short of the 50,000 Basarwa who live in Botswana, 2,000 of whom say they want to go home. And officials also argue that tribesmen cannot take along domestic animals or other items that have become necessities for these descendants of hunter-gatherers.

According to Survival International, government officials forced nearly all of the Bushmen to leave the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in three separate events in 1997, 2002, and 2005. Their homes were dismantled, their school and health center were closed, and their water supply was destroyed. Botswana's government has sought to evict the local tribesman numerous times over the last 20 years, ostensibly to promote tourism and protect wildlife in the area, although many believe the main reason has more to do with diamond mining aspirations.

Life in relocation camps outside the reserve has been especially difficult for the Bushmen, Survival says. Rarely able to hunt, they have been dependent on government handouts while their society has become gripped by alcoholism, boredom, depression, and illnesses such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS .

"The government has given various different reasons for the evictions," Survival International's Ross told OneWorld. "The government said it's for the people's own good--that they can't live hunting and gathering in this day and age, that they need to become civilized. The president said if the Bushmen want to survive they'll have to change or they'll perish like the Dodo. They've also said it's because the game reserve is for animals and that the Bushmen are a danger to animals.What Survival believes is that the Bushmen were evicted because there were diamonds found under their land in the early 1980s,"

Ross said. "There isn't mining in the reserve at the moment but we believe the government wanted to get the Bushmen out of the way so future diamond mining could take place."
Ross noted much of Botswana's foreign exchange comes from partnerships with diamond companies like DeBeers.

"DeBeers has a concession in the Kalahari Game Reserve," she said, "so it has the right to explore for diamonds in the reserve. I would ask the government to explain that."

3.

The leader of the San Bushmen met British lawmakers in London on Wednesday in a bid to drum up support for his people's struggle to return to their land in the Kalahari desert in Botswana.
In December 2006, a court in Botswana's southern city of Lobatse ruled that hundreds of San Bushmen were wrongly forced out from the Kalahari Game Reserve after a marathon legal battle. The Bushmen maintain they were driven out of the Kalahari when vital supplies were cut off in order to make way for diamond mining -- a claim the world's top diamond producer has denied.
But despite the court victory, the Botswana government is trying to prevent them returning to their land, claimed Survival International, a London-based non-governmental organisation supporting tribal people. In addition, the attorney general has said that only Bushmen named in the court case can return, Survival said. Despite the court ruling that the evictions were illegal, the government has refused to help the Bushmen make the long journey home. It has also banned the Bushmen from taking their small herds of goats back to their land. Since the court ruling, Bushman hunters have been arrested, beaten and held for days without food.

The government of Botswana has set down conditions for travel to the country by a UN human-rights spokesperson in what critics say is part of a concerted campaign to cover up the state's shoddy treatment of the San Bushmen. The government invoked a special clause of the constitution in requiring the UN special rapporteur on indigenous peoples, Mexican Rodolfo Stavenhagen, to get a visa to visit Botswana, said Survival International, the British-based human rights group. Most visitors to Botswana merely require a visa stamp in their passport on entry to the country. The same restrictions were imposed in March on 17 individuals including four Survival staff, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson and other journalists and human rights activists, most of whom had taken an interest in the eviction of the Kalahari Bushmen .

Sesana said , 'We Bushmen won our court case, and this made us feel strong again. But now the President is ignoring Botswana's own court. I am asking people in Britain to please help us, because people are dying in the places where we have been forced to live.'
Sesana will also go to Downing Street to deliver a letter from the Bushmen to Tony Blair expressing their dismay at the British government's support for the evictions.

About 100,000 San live in the region: 50,000 in Botswana, 4,500 in South Africa, 38,000 in Namibia, 1,600 in Zambia and 1,200 in Zimbabwe, according to the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA), based in the Namibian capital of Windhoek.

Botswana: Fracking the Kalahari

While a fierce debate rages about fracking in South Africa and elsewhere, the Botswana government has been silently pushing ahead with plans to produce natural gas, keeping the country in the dark as it grants concessions over vast tracts of land, including half of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve - the ancestral home of the San.

A new documentary film - the High Cost of Cheap Gas - has uncovered incontrovertible evidence that drilling and fracking are underway in Botswana and that international companies are planning massive gas operations in the future. But there has been little attempt to inform the public, despite growing international concerns about the harmful effects of natural gas production.
"The people of Botswana have the right to know about developments on this scale and to be given the chance to publicly debate their pros and cons and then decide whether natural gas production is in their best interest," said Jeffrey Barbee, Director of the film, which was funded by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).

For more than a decade, the authorities in Botswana - routinely referred to as one of Africa's best governed states - have been quietly granting licences to international companies. South Africa's SASOL, Australian-based Tamboran Resources, Anglo American, Tlou Energy, Kalahari Energy, Exxaro and many more are drilling for Coal Bed Methane (CBM) without any public debate about the industry, particularly the serious threats these large scale developments pose to the environment and communities.

While activists have been campaigning against the extraction of shale gas and coal bed methane for years, the film documents alarming new evidence from the United States, exposing the damage these industries can inflict on human and animal health, and the environment. Structural problems with the entire production process mean that 'unconventional' natural gas like this can end up being 'dirtier' than coal - contributing even more to greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change.

For a water scarce country like Botswana gas extraction - whether through fracking or simple drilling - poses another worrying threat: Coal Bed Methane extraction requires vast amounts of water to be pumped out of the ground, which can significantly lower the water table. In some parts of America, where this process was pioneered, water tables have dropped by as much as 30 meters.
"Lowering the water table in parts of rural Botswana could mean the difference between a community having access to water one day and not the next," said the film's director, Jeffrey Barbee. "It might be in Botswana's best interests to allow fracking but only if all the potential impacts based on the latest science - not just the promises of gas companies - are openly debated and if the regulations are tough enough and are rigorously enforced long after drilling has stopped."
However, if America is anything to go by, the natural gas industry is adept at undermining, bypassing or riding roughshod over government regulations and regulators.

Astonishingly, fracking companies in the USA are not bound by the Clean Air Act, the Community Right to Know Act or the Clean Water Act. And despite Botswana government claims to the contrary, a senior official at SASOL, which is planning thousands of gas wells in Botswana, says in the film that they were not required to produce an environmental management plan. Apparently, SASOL did produce one anyway since it is international best practice, but other companies might be more willing to exploit this inexplicable weakness in the regulations.

In particular, there are fears that the hard won right of the San to live on, and access water from, their ancestral land will be threatened by the coal bed methane concessions in and around the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
Indeed, according to the film, drilling is already taking place within the confines of the world famous reserve. Elsewhere in the country, the unfenced buffer zones on the borders of other bio-diversity rich - and economically important - national parks, like Chobe and Kgalagadi, are already being drilled. In fact, it appears that the government has also granted some concessions within Chobe National Park. This endangers not only the local communities but also the largest herd of migrating elephants left in the world.

The gas industry promises jobs and economic development but evidence from the USA shows that the few local jobs are created and that riches usually do not trickle down to the local communities, who have to live with the extraction.
"It is time for the Botswana government to come clean about natural gas operations in the country and to encourage an open and genuine debate so that the population can decide what is best for them and their country - not just an elite few", said Barbee.
"Instead the authorities keep everyone in the dark, particularly the San, who now face another grave threat to their future from Botswana's secretive dash for gas."

from here

Bashing the Bushmen

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently warned ‘Preventing people’s access to safe water is a denial of a fundamental human right...deliberate targeting of civilians and depriving them of essential supplies is a clear breach of international humanitarian and human-rights law.’

Botswana uses water as a weapon against the Kalahari bushmen in an attempt to force them from their land. The government smashed their only major water borehole, a terrible act that was only overturned in court years later. It has continued to forbid them access to wild-life water-holes and mining water supplies.

The indigenous Bushmen people (or the San or Baswara, all names having pejorative roots) have been in conflict with the Botswana government for several years. Many live in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve where they have continued to be persecuted to drive them from their land. Banned from hunting, and forced to apply for permits to enter the reserve, they are now being pushed to the brink of extinction. The government policy is clearly to intimidate and frighten the Bushmen into staying in the resettlement camps, and making the lives of those who have gone back to their ancestral land impossible. The government boasts that all San in Botswana get free schooling, free medical help and if they register they receive free food. Despite government promises of a better life outside the Reserve many are now gripped by alcoholism and HIV/AIDS, previously unknown.

‘We are used to feeding ourselves – now dependant on government hand-outs, we are being made lazy and stupid,’ says Sesana. ‘Now we are being treated like dogs. The dog is the only thing that can't bring its own food home. It has to wait for its owner to give it some food.’

Goiotseone Lobelo speaks fondly of life in the reserve, where she would wake up every morning and join the women in the village in collecting berries, nuts and roots to eat. ‘I miss my home and the way we lived. Life was easy, there were lots of fruits, animals and there were no bars and no beer. Now we are lost,’ says Goiotseone. She remembers the day they were forced to leave ‘The police came, destroyed our homes and dumped us in the back of trucks with our belongings and brought us here. They dumped us here like we are nothing.’

In the early 1980s, diamonds were discovered in the reserve. Soon after, government ministers went into the reserve to tell the Bushmen living there that they would have to leave because of the diamond finds. Gem Diamonds has stated publicly that its Gope mine contains a diamond deposit worth an estimated $3.3 billion.

At the same time as preventing the Bushmen from accessing water, the government allows a safari company to operate a tourist camp in the reserve that made no provisions for the rights of the Bushmen on whose ancestral lands the camp sits. While Bushmen  struggle to find enough water to survive on their lands, tourists sip iced cocktails by the swimming pool.

Desmond Tutu has condemned the eviction of the Kalahari Bushmen. ‘The San Bushmen represent a 100,000 year-old culture that we should consider one of the world’s treasures. And while progress is necessary, it cannot be that the only way to achieve progress is to remove the San from their ancestral lands and drive their traditions away. We’ve already seen this with the American Indians, the Aborigines, and it is also happening with the Tibetans. When a culture is destroyed in the name of progress, it is not progress, it is a loss for our world. Hundreds of thousands of years of wisdom, knowledge of nature, medicines, and ways of living together, go with them’ (a plant used by the San was patented and licensed by a pharmaceutical company to produce an appetite suppressant drug for dieting).

In February this year Botswana’s President Khama was a guest at a conservationist conference, alongside Prince Charles and Prince William. Khama has banned all hunting nationwide under the pretext of clamping down on poaching. However, it emerged that trophy hunters who pay up to $8,000 to hunt giraffes and zebras are still being allowed to hunt on private ranches that have been exempted from the ban. Yet Bushmen who hunt with spears, bows and arrows are being arrested, beaten and jailed for subsistence hunting.

Survival International’s director, Stephen Corry, said ‘Banning hunting in order to feed your family, but allowing the wealthy to hunt for trophies, plays to a lobby still rooted in racist beliefs about tribal peoples’ inferiority. The national park movement entailed the enforced eviction, often the complete destruction, of the tribes who lived off the land. Satellite imagery now proves that many tribal peoples are the world’s best conservationists, yet they’re still being destroyed. It’s not ‘conservation’; it’s just an old colonial crime, and it’s time the responsible organizations opposed it. Instead, they hide behind hollow policies, while continuing to support governments guilty of such inhuman behaviour.’

From here 

ReconAfrica and the San

 An insightful essay upon the persecution of the San people so that the extractive industries can loot, pillage and plunder. 

ReconAfrica has been given permission to drill for fossil fuels in the Kavango basin between Namibia and Botswana and the Kalahari Desert extending to the south eastern banks of the Okavango River and Delta. ReconAfrica is a Canadian-US corporation whose headquarters are based in Vancouver, Canada. ReconAfrica is an extension of the colonial project that began in Europe 500 years ago and has morphed today into local and global extractivism.

The area includes numerous areas of international ecological significance, but for the San indigenous people who live there this is their sacred and ancestral ‘homeland’. The San people are the rightful current inhabitants and have been the custodians of this land for thousands of years. They have never been consulted, nor have they given their consent to any entities to prospect for oil and gas in their lands. By pursuing oil and gas development in the are the governments of Botswana and Namibia. It contravene their commitments to various international declarations an agreements as well as their own national laws. The oil and gas drilling operations will ruin roads, damage Indigenous livelihoods, deplete water resources and negatively impact biodiversity.

Recon and economic elites have so dehumanized and othered the San people and their land that they do not count and therefore they can be removed or poisoned, or pillaged or destroyed. Who cares if the groundwater is contaminated through the drilling and mining operations? Who cares if this impacts the health and food security of the San people? Economic development and profit matter more than Indigenous peoples’ lives.

Full article can be read here

The Windigo Disease of Resource Capitalism and Global Dispossession of Indigenous Peoples | Dissident Voice

Botswana V Bushmen

Socialist Banner previously reported on the plight of the indigenous San people (Bushmen) being deprived of access to water by the Botswana government here . We now read that in desperation the Bushmen are taking legal measures to assert their basic human right to water. They are taking the government of Botswana to court over its refusal to allow them access to a water borehole on their land. The case is due to be heard at Botswana’s High Court in Lobatse on 9 June 2010.

Jumanda Gakelebone, a Bushman from the CKGR, explained "The High Court said we have the right to live on the land of our ancestors. Surely that includes the right to drink our water. Many Bushmen, especially the old people and the young are suffering from lack of water. It pains us that the animals and tourists on our land can drink our water to their heart’s content yet we go thirsty. We pray that the court will give us back our water."

It is claimed by Survival International and others that the Kalahari was being emptied so that tourists would have uninterrupted views of wildlife. The Botswana Tourism Board, a government body, won a World Travel and Tourism Council award which recognizes "dedication to and success in maintaining a programme of sustainable tourism management". Wilderness Safaris built a safari lodge on the ancestral land of the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana, without consulting the Bushmen or obtaining their consent.The lodge, sporting a bar and swimming pool for tourists, is situated on the ancestral territory of the Bushmen who are being deprived of water.Survival director, Stephen Corry, yesterday said, "The Botswana Tourism Board is violating UN norms on indigenous peoples. If this is prize-winning ‘sustainable tourism’, it highlights the emerging conflict between tribal peoples and the way their lands are used to benefit rich tourists and the companies which service them..."

At the same time, diamond firms are understood to have the government’s support for fresh prospecting in the reserve, which is the size of Denmark. It has given the Gem Diamond company permission to open a mine in the reserve.

The San Win in Court

Socialist Banner has carried a number of posts about the victimisation of the San in Botswana.

The latest development is for the moment good news for Botswana’s first peoples. Dozens of Botswana Bushmen threatened with eviction, reportedly because they live in an area proposed as a 'wildlife corridor', have won a significant court victory in their struggle to stay on their land. The Bushmen in fact pose no threat to wildlife, alongside which they have lived sustainably for centuries, and many believe the eviction is in fact to benefit local cattle ranchers. The corridor project was promoted by the US organization Conservation International (CI) - Botswana's President Khama sits on Conservation International's board.

Government officials and police set up camp at Ranyane to pressurize residents into relocating. Last month the local council told residents that they would be evicted in just four days, and sent trucks and police to the settlement to intimidate them. The Bushmen went to court, and obtained a temporary injunction against their eviction.

Bushmen still persecuted

Bushmen in Botswana's Central Kalahari game reserve have requested the Dalai Lama, to appeal to the government on their behalf for restoring their rights over ancestral lands during his upcoming visit to the African country.

Bushman spokesman Jumanda Gakelebone asked the Dalai Lama to urge Botswana's president Ian Khama "to listen to us and respect our rights".

Hundreds of Bushmen were evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of conservation, and moved into government camps between 1997 and 2002, following the discovery of diamonds in the Kalahari desert.

Botswana's High Court ruled in 2006 that more than 1,000 San Bushmen had been wrongly evicted and should be allowed to return. But the government continues to enforce a permit system, which rights group Survival International has compared to apartheid-era pass laws. "We still cannot live on our lands freely. The government makes it so that children must apply for permits to visit their parents when they become adults," Gakelebone said in the letter published by Survival International.

The Bushmen are also accused of poaching when they hunt to feed their families, and face arrests and beatings under a nationwide hunting ban, rights groups say. "Yet the government is happy for mining to take place on our ancestral land." The United Nation's special representative on cultural rights in 2014 questioned why the San were evicted to conserve wildlife while diamond mining has been allowed to continue.

"No independent observer believes the Bushmen pose any kind of risk to the country's wildlife," said Survival International Director Stephen Corry.

 "We are the first people of the Kalahari. We are the ones who have protected this land and the animals that live there," the letter said.

The San - again

Socialist Banner has sympathetically and repeatedly reported on the manner that the San Bushmen are being treated by the Botswana government.

In the early 1980s, diamonds were discovered in the reserve. Soon after, government ministers went into the reserve to tell the Bushmen living there that they would have to leave because of the diamond finds. In three big clearances, in 1997, 2002 and 2005, virtually all the Bushmen were forced out. Their homes were dismantled, their school and health post were closed, their water supply was destroyed and the people were threatened and trucked away. They now live in resettlement camps outside the reserve. Rarely able to hunt, and arrested and beaten when they do, they are dependent on government handouts. They are now gripped by alcoholism, boredom, depression, and illnesses such as TB and HIV/AIDS.

The forced relocation of indigenous tribespeople by the Botswanan government was condemned by US diplomats as a "special tragedy", leaked US state department cables reveal. After visiting New Xade in 2005, ambassador Huggins condemned the manner of the relocation, saying it was "clear that people have been dumped in economically absolutely unviable situations without forethought, and without follow-up support. The lack of imagination displayed on the part of the [Botswanan government] is breathtaking." He added that "the special tragedy of New Xade's dependent population is that it could have been avoided."

In 2006, Botswanan courts ruled the San could return to their land, but also decided the government did not have to provide certain key services. The San still have no access to the borehole. A hearing was held in June 2010 but the judge dismissed their application. They are now appealing against this decision.

India and Africa

Exports and Imports figures for India in relation to each country.

MOROCCO (Rabat): Joint venture in fertiliser sector operational since 1999; Tata builds bus bodies in Casablanca. In 2014, exports $ 500.5 mn; imports $ 855.8 mn

ALGERIA (Algiers): Trade grew from $ 55 mn in 2001 to $ 3.33 bn in 2011; fell to $ 1.82 bn in 2014 due to fall in crude prices. Exports: auto spares, machinery; imports: oil and its products

MALI (Bamako): LoCs worth over $ 300 million. Among the world’s poorest, wracked by Tuareg rebellion and jihadi activities

NIGERIA (Abuja): Each other’s largest trading partners in Africa. Over 100 Indian owned/operated companies

NIGER (Niamey): In 2014-15, exports $ 78.22 mn; imports $ 0.55 mn

TUNISIA (Tunis): In 2014, exports $ 283.92 mn; imports $ 148.45 mn

 LIBYA (Tripoli): Since August 2014, 3,592 Indians have been evacuated, mission temporarily relocated to D’jerba

CHAD (N’Djamena): Imports in 2014-15 $ 62.77 mn, mainly crude. Airtel acquired Zain Telecom in 2010, now Chad’s biggest network

EGYPT (Cairo): India sixth largest trading partner; in 2014-15, imports $ 1.74 bn (crude, rock phosphate); exports $ 3.02 bn

SUDAN (Khartoum): 30-odd bilateral agreements. In 2014-15, exports $ 882.47 mn; imports: $ 569.66 mn

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (Bangui): War-torn country; trade relations minuscule. LoCs totalling nearly $ 90 million

SOUTH SUDAN (Juba): India did not take sides in Sudan’s civil wars; carries no baggage. ONGC Videsh Ltd has invested $ 2.5 bn in Sudan and South Sudan

UGANDA (Kampala): Modi visited Kampala in 2007 as Gujarat CM. In 2013-14, exports: $ 1.27 bn; imports $ 18.76 mn

ERITREA (Asmara): Former Italian and British colony, gained independence in 1993. In 2014-15, bilateral trade $ 244.73 mn

ETHIOPIA (Addis Ababa): Ties dating back 2000 years. At over $ 1 bn, single largest recipient of Indian LoC in Africa. Indian firms among top three foreign investors

KENYA (Nairobi): Old ties, strong Indian disapora, many Kenyans receive education in India. Trade $ 4.23 bn in 2014-15

SOMALIA (Mogadishu): Longest coastline in Africa. In 2014-15, exports: $ 352.81 mn; imports $ 38.25 mn

RWANDA (Kigali): Engagement at African Union, Regional Economic Communities and bilateral levels. Many Rwandans visit for medical treatment and education

MADAGASCAR (Antananarivo): In 2014-15, exports: $ 167.19 mn (cereals, apparel); imports $ 95.29 mn (coffee and spices)

BURUNDI (Bujumbura): Modest trade ($ 30.89 mn in 2013-14), heavily skewed in India’s favour

DR CONGO (Kinshasa): Several Indian LoCs, donations and grants. Huge possibility of cooperation in exploitation of natural resources. In 2014-15, exports $ 254.16 mn; imports $ 126.45 mn

TANZANIA (Dodoma): In June, President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete became first continental African leader to pay a state visit under Modi government. In 2014, exports $ 2.46 bn; imports $ 1.29 bn

MALAWI (Lilongwe): In 2014-15 exports $ 214.02 mn (textile yarn, fabrics); imports $ 36.78 mn (pulses, chickpea)

MOZAMBIQUE (Maputo): Several ministerial visits recently; LoCs worth over $ 600 million. Trade in 2014-15 $ 2.39 bn; exports $2.07 bn

ZIMBABWE (Harare): Series of visits at highest level up to late 90s. Bilateral trade volumes small, under $ 180 mn in 2014-15

SWAZILAND (Mbabane): Only contact at the highest level in Addis Ababa in 2011. Two LoCs worth $ 57.9 million

BOTSWANA (Gaborone): In 2013-14, exports $ 72.2 mn; imports $ 1.10 bn. Botswana’s main export is diamonds, but has huge deposits of other minerals

LESOTHO (Maseru): Landlocked country almost entirely surrounded by South Africa. Bilateral trade much below potential

SOUTH AFRICA (Johannesburg): Ties historical and friendly, Gandhi and Mandela are shared icons, countries part of BRICS. In 2013-14, exports $ 5.07 bn; imports $ 6.07 bn

NAMIBIA (Windhoek): Relations traditionally warm; volume of trade small. Spike in Indian investments over last five years

ANGOLA (Luanda): India is second largest trade partner after China, 15% share in total external trade. In 2014-15, imports were $ 4.61 bn; exports: $ 552 mn

REPUBLIC OF CONGO (Brazzaville): Lines of Credit worth over $ 200 million, assistance in development and capacity building programmes

GABON (Libreville): In 2013, OIL discovered 41 million barrels of “in place” oil. Second largest producer of manganese

EQUATORIAL GUINEA (Malabo): Former Spanish colony, no high-level bilateral visits so far

CAMEROON (Yaoundé): Potential for cooperation and investment in oil and gas, mining, telecom, fertilisers, agriculture. In 2014-15, exports $ 249.13 mn; imports $ 745.35 mn

BENIN (Porto Novo): Expansion in ties since President Boni Yay’s visit in 2009. Trade in 2014-15 $ 720 mn.

TOGO (Lomé): Four LoCs totalling $ 144.35 million. Exports in 2014-15 $ 688.42 mn; imports $ 195.65 mn

BURKINA FASO (Ouagadougou): Trade $ 264.40 mn in 2014-15; imports (gold, cotton) growing faster than exports

GHANA (Accra): Personal friendship between Nehru and Nkrumah. Investments of $ 998 million by Indian corporates in more than 600 projects from 1994-2014; India second largest foreign investor country by number of projects

COTE D’IVOIRE (Abidjan): Wracked by conflict. Main import cashew; India imports around 80%

LIBERIA (Monrovia): President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf conferred Indira Gandhi Peace Prize in 2012

SIERRA LEONE (Freetown): Trade volumes are limited, hit badly in 2014-15 by Ebola outbreak

GUINEA BISSAU (Bissau): Cashew bring more than 90% of export earnings; almost entire crop processed in India

THE GAMBIA (Banjul): Smallest country in mainland Africa. In 2014-15, exports: $ 73.53 mn; imports $ 36.08 mn (raw cashew, cotton)

MAURITANIA (Nouakchott): Virtually no economic relations, but considerable potential

CABO VERDE (Praia): Small trading relationship. Main exports: pharmaceuticals, drugs and plastics

SAN TOME AND PRINCIPE (São Tomé): Island in Atlantic; ONGC Videsh has oil block stake

DJIBOUTI (Djibouti City): Historical ties; trade in 2013-14 was $ 311.19 mn