In the final leg of his five-nation visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will reach Windhoek in Namibia tomorrow on the invitation of Namibian President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. This will be the first visit of PM Modi to Namibia, and the third ever Prime Ministerial visit from India to Namibia. Our correspondent covering the Prime Minister’s visit reports that the visit of PM Narendra Modi aims to expand the scope of bilateral relationship and explore new areas of cooperation in various key sectors such as hydrocarbons, rare earth materials and unified payment interoperability, among others. Our correspondent has filed this report on India Namibia relationship.
Both India and Namibia have a shared history of anti-colonial struggle. The first ever diplomatic mission of Namibia, known as SWAPO at the time, was set up in Delhi in 1986 before the independence of Namibia. Today, both countries share a wide range of areas for cooperation, including trade and investment, mining, diamond processing, energy, health care, defence, environment and biodiversity and capacity building. The trade between the two countries is 600 million dollars, and Indian investments in Namibia are about 800 million. Taking forward the partnership in wildlife conservation, eight cheetahs were translocated from Namibia to India’s Kuno National Park in September 2022. At the digital front, Namibia was the first country in the world where NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) signed a Technology Agreement for deployment of a UPI-like real-time payments system with the Central Bank. The upcoming visit is also set to explore new areas of cooperation in other sectors, such as agriculture, pharma, and India’s low-cost solutions like Digital Public Infrastructure, Janaushadhi, traditional medicine, and Ayurveda.
