India's rise to power: where does East Africa fit in?

Considerable uncertainty surrounds the intentions and aspirations of rising powers, particularly the extent to which they are status quo or revisionist. How a new power behaves with some of the weakest members of the international system provides a useful indicator of how it will go on to behave as it emerges as a Great Power. In this paper, India's engagement with East Africa is analysed. East Africa offers a particularly rich ground for conducting such an analysis: it comprises some of the world's poorest countries with which India has had a long history of foreign relations, and has also attracted considerable involvement in recent years by China (another major power on the rise). While the central focus of the paper is on India's East Africa foreign policy, China's presence in the region offers an important point of comparison that helps us identify some of the unique features of India's pathway to power. The analysis generates several interesting findings on India's negotiation strategy as a rising power, its willingness to provide leadership, and a set of development ideas that it offers as a potential alternative to not just the Washington Consensus but also the Beijing Consensus.