Introduction
Bharat’s bilateral, trilateral, and regional playbook contributes to a prosperous and sustainable planet. Shri Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of Bharat had interactions with world leaders of Australia, Angola, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam, along with the Director General of the WTO and officials of the African Union. Trump’s autocratic tariff regime has miscarried in generating a ‘fear of failure’ syndrome across the world, including Bharat, and the absence of the US during the G20 Summit further strengthens this view. The greater voice for the Global South in global governance and Modi’s idea of Critical Thinking, Ideation, Communication, Collaboration, and the Ethics of Shubh Labh (Auspicious Gain) should become an integral part of globality.
Prime Minister Modi has successively systematized Bhartiya ideas through four G20 Summits in the Global South and has encouraged entrepreneurship across small businesses, scalable startups, innovation-driven enterprises, intrapreneurship, and adaptive entrepreneurship, with a focus on skilled migration, tourism, food security, artificial intelligence, the digital economy, innovation, and women empowerment. He further emphasized the need to examine new parameters of development, the imbalance of growth, and the overexploitation of nature, stating that “the idea of integral humanism based on India’s civilizational wisdom must be explored, which takes into account a holistic view of human society and nature, and that is how harmony between progress and planet could be achieved” (Press, 2025). These initiatives resonate strongly across the new Africa, as all proposals align with the aspirations of its people.
Rich Knowledge Repository
The richest scientific knowledge source, the Nalanda University library in ancient Bharat, produced the Gyan-Vigyan Parampara (Bharat Knowledge System), encompassing a continuous flow of intellectual, philosophical, and cultural heritage across the world. Prime Minister Modi’s new playbook reminds the global community that traditional knowledge repositories can harness the collective wisdom of humanity for the benefit of future generations. Jugaad—a Bhartiya innovation emphasizing creative and resourceful low-cost solutions—supports ease of doing business, startup development, investor engagement, incubator creation, and the formation of nascent entrepreneurship in practice.
Prime Minister Modi’s new Africa playbook focuses on the African youth skills multiplier, adequate skill training, healthcare response teams comprising experts, and their deployment across Africa. Modi has shared satellite data for agriculture, fisheries, disaster management, and weather forecasting, among others, while also promoting the creation of a critical minerals circularity initiative to foster recycling, urban mining, second-life battery projects, strengthen supply chain security, and develop cleaner pathways of development for the new Africa. Prioritizing peace and security globally, Bharat proposed a G20 initiative to counter drug and narcotics cartels and international terrorism.
Bilateral to Multilateral Symphony
Prime Minister Modi has developed affirmative action programmes with the aforementioned world leaders to meet climate action commitments and provide affordable finance and technology to the Global South in a time-bound manner. These initiatives strengthen disaster resilience and response mechanisms, ensure debt sustainability, harness critical minerals for sustainable economic growth, and mobilize finance for a peaceful energy transition. The agriculture sector should promote millet-based nutrition as part of food security and foster entrepreneurship, thereby encouraging business incubators across Africa and Asia.
The Bharat–Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership reflects Bharat’s new Africa playbook by strengthening political ties, strategic engagement including defence and security, trade, commerce and investment, critical minerals collaboration, academic exchanges, employment, internships, apprenticeships, and energy partnerships. This playbook is expected to generate self-entrepreneurship, self-employment, freelance services, service providers, and consultancy opportunities across the African continent.
Bharat–France strategic ties have positioned Bharat as a reliable global defence partner, with expanding defence exports to Francophone Africa. Bharat and South Korea have discussed regional and global issues that will accelerate cooperation in Africa, particularly in software technology, science and technology, healthcare, and education. The Bharat–Canada–Australia trilateral cooperation mechanism has agreed to deepen technology and innovation partnerships. This trilateral framework has reached consensus on sharing capabilities and resources while addressing concerns related to artificial intelligence, science and technology, clean energy partnerships, supply chain diversification, and affordability during the G20 Summit, thereby contributing to the new Africa playbook.
Bharat–Brazil–South Africa cooperation has focused on the finance track of multilateral banks, debt vulnerability, financial inclusion, digital public infrastructure, and technology deployment. All parties have committed to women-led development, ensuring women’s full, equal, and meaningful participation at all decision-making levels. This requires scaling up climate finance from billions to trillions of dollars and endorsing disaster risk reduction financing mechanisms, including the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure initiative. Bharat’s new Africa playbook proposes tripling renewable energy capacity in Africa and doubling the annual rate of energy efficiency improvements. Bharat’s Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) initiative has been extended to Africa, with Brazil and South Africa endorsing it.
As part of IBSA, this trilateral forum met during the G20 Summit and emphasized the restructuring of the UN Security Council’s permanent membership while reviving the IBSA Fund for defence, food security, nutrition, poverty alleviation, and strengthening people-to-people connections.
New Africa Playbook
“Stupidity is still original,” remarked on a lighter note in comparison with artificial intelligence. Comprehensive AI principles emphasize human-centric, safe, secure, and trustworthy development globally, positioning AI as a supportive tool rather than a primary driver. Bharat emphasizes that AI and machine learning should support software-as-a-service models, while Bharat–Africa collaboration offers AI opportunities in green technology, remote work solutions, healthcare, wellness, education technology, and low-barrier entry sectors such as consultancy, digital marketing, online education, freelance platforms, and other low-hanging opportunities.
Bharat’s new Africa playbook offers opportunities in venture capital, addressing funding gaps, crowdfunding, angel investment, the gig economy, and government grants, alongside the development of university programmes. It provides entrepreneurial advantages through technology transfer, talent pipelines, deep domain knowledge, access to resources, and educational benefits in automation and rural market development. Bharat may replicate successful initiatives such as Startup Bharat, Make in Bharat, and Digital Bharat across the African continent.
The OECD Skills Report (2025) highlights that educational attainment must align with skill attainment in India through the National Education Policy 2022. Bharat should extend this education policy framework to the new Africa as well, enabling sustainable and inclusive development. Bharat and Africa share rich traditions of complementary medicine, validating their holistic healthcare heritage. This valuable resource requires entrepreneurship and financial support to cultivate global health solutions.
Conclusion
Prime Minister Modi’s four visits to South Africa (2016, 2018, 2023, and 2025) have transformed the dynamics of the international political economy. He engaged with young tech entrepreneurs of Bhartiya origin in Africa, interacted with the Indian diaspora and organizational leaders, held dialogues with the CEO of Naspers, and strengthened people-to-people connections (Press, 2025).
Bharat has established the G20 Africa Skills Multiplier as part of its new Africa playbook, supporting steady and rapid economic growth while building future-ready skilled manpower. The Prime Minister has called for a “global compact to prevent the misuse of artificial intelligence and made a strong pitch for critical technologies to be human-centric rather than finance-centric” (Press, 2025), paving the way for a sustainable and green future for the globe.
Reference:
Press, 22 November 2025. https://www.mea.gov.in/media-briefings.htm
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