New Delhi: Vice-president Hamid Ansari left on Sunday on a five-day tour of Rwanda and Uganda in a bid to broaden India’s general outreach to resource-rich Africa and establish its footprint in sub-Saharan Africa. Ansari will be the first Indian leader to visit Rwanda, where the capital Kigali will be his first stop. Together, Ansari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee visited 12 African nations in 2016. “During the current government, under our Africa Outreach Initiative we have also had visits to all African countries at ministerial level, except perhaps the Central African Republic. A key partner of African nations in the 1950s and 1960s, India has seen its influence in the region wane.

Source: Mint February 19, 2017 17:49 UTC