May 29, 2026 — In this week’s episode of Around the World, Veda Vaidyanathan, Fellow in Foreign Policy and Security Studies at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, joins hosts Dhruva Jaishankar and Rachel Rizzo to break down the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda — highlighting its implications for health governance and evolving India-Africa ties, as well as the recent cancellation of the fourth India-Africa Forum Summit. The hosts also recap U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s trips to Europe and India, assessing the outcomes of the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting and key developments in U.S.-India relations.
Available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Image: © European Union, 2026, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Image: Prime Minister addressing the Inaugural Session of India Africa Forum Summit 2015 in New Delhi (Oct 29, 2015) via MEAphotogallery on Flickr
Image: U.S. Embassy Australia via Instagram (@usembassyau)
Sneak peak
Rachel Rizzo: On this week's episode.
Veda Vaidyanathan: This outbreak is important because this is not the first time Congo is battling this. It's also happening at a time when, you know, Western funding cuts have happened in the region. The U.S. has pulled out of the WHO, USAID has shut down, clinics have shut down, healthcare workers have disappeared. There's also a conflict happening. There's also effects of climate change. So it's a multitude of factors which makes this, it's not just a pandemic. It's actually a scenario which India has to not just look at the health outcomes, but also the geopolitics around it.
Dhruva Jaishankar: The workman-like aspects of the U.S.-India relationship and the Quad relationship have continued, what has otherwise been a politically turbulent year despite tariffs, despite the adverse politics. But I think what is missing and what is going to take some time to repair, if it happens at all, is the sort political trust and the optics of the relationship.
Rachel Rizzo: When Rubio went to this NATO foreign ministers meeting, it wasn't a really easy room. It never is with NATO these days. He's already faced the difficult task of reassuring allies who are still anxious about the U.S. presidents' unpredictability. As we've talked about it before, I think that they have gotten used to these kinds of conversations, gotten used to the unpredictability of the U.S. It doesn't make it any easier, but it does make Europe a little bit less reactive.
welcome to around the world
Dhruva Jaishankar: Hello, I'm Dhruva Jaishankar.
Rachel Rizzo: And I'm Rachel Rizzo. Welcome to the Around the World podcast, your essential guide to understanding the forces shaping our world today. Here, we cut through the noise to bring you clear, insightful analysis of the most important developments in geopolitics.
Dhruva Jaishankar: Whether it's security challenges in Europe, great power competition in Asia, domestic politics in the United States, or regional developments in Latin America or the Middle East, we'll discuss what's happening and more importantly, why it matters.
Rachel Rizzo: Thanks for tuning in and be sure to like and subscribe to the Around the World podcast on YouTube, Spotify and Apple podcasts.
Navigating Tensions and Reigniting Ties
Dhruva Jaishankar: Hi, Rachel. How are you?
Rachel Rizzo: Hey, Dhruva, how's it going?
Dhruva Jaishankar: Good, good. We have a lot to talk about. The last couple of weeks, things are happening in Iran. We've had all sorts of developments. We'll be talking a little bit later about the Ebola outbreak in Africa and some of the implications of that with a guest. But we just had, you’re in Delhi, and we just had U.S. Secretary State Marco Rubio make his first visit as Secretary of State to India. How was it?
Rachel Rizzo: So this was part of a larger trip for the U.S. Secretary of State where he stopped by Sweden for a NATO foreign ministers meeting and then came here to India where he went to Kolkata, went to New Delhi obviously for high level meetings, Agra and Jaipur as well. He was also welcomed by a major event here in New Delhi, a 250th U.S. anniversary event that included a surprise performance by A.R. Raman. It included a performance from the village people and it included a phone call by President Trump to the U.S. ambassador here in Delhi, Sergio Gore, talking about the strength of the U.S.-India relationship. So Marco Rubio has certainly had a busy couple of weeks behind him and just flew back to the United States after the Quad meeting on Tuesday.
Dhruva Jaishankar: So let's start quickly with the NATO summit. We've spoken in previous episode about the Ankara summit that's coming up in July and its implications. But what was that all about, the meeting in Sweden?
Rachel Rizzo: So, NATO has these foreign ministers meetings occasionally just to kind of level set and make sure everyone's on the same page to talk about developments affecting the alliance. This specific foreign ministers meeting focused on issues related to defense spending as always, talked about defense industrial production and really tried to lay the groundwork for the upcoming NATO summit in Ankara in July. Now, you know, these NATO summits that take place, they come out with declarations, with communiques, and all of those are very carefully orchestrated ahead of time. So meetings like this make sure that allies are on the same page so that we don't get any major surprises at the leader level summits when they do happen. When Rubio went to this NATO foreign ministers meeting, it wasn't a really easy room. It never is with NATO these days. He's already faced the difficult task of reassuring allies who are still anxious about the U.S. presidents' unpredictability. And then just hours before the meeting, Donald Trump announced that he would be sending an additional 5,000 troops to Poland. This is after he announced that Poland would not be getting an expected deployment that it had been planning on as part of a rotational deployment. And it also followed an announcement that they would be removing 5,000 troops from Germany as well. So it was sort of a yo-yo of a trip for Rubio, but I think he left with NATO allies feeling okay. As we've talked about it before, I think that they have gotten used to these kinds of conversations, gotten used to the unpredictability of the U.S. It doesn't make it any easier, but it does make Europe a little bit less reactive.
Dhruva Jaishankar: And the reassurance tour seemed to have continued on to India, so maybe talk a little bit about the bilateral exchanges and just like the other stuff that happened you think from Rubio’s visit.
Rachel Rizzo: Yeah, so I mean, this was a really important meeting for Marco Rubio. I mean, the U.S.-India partnership has really long been hailed as one of the world's defining geopolitical alignments. Even Marco Rubio himself has referred to it as a defining relationship with the 21st century. And looking at the U.S. and India, these are two massive economies with a shared unease about China's rise. They're both democratic economies, major growing economies. And I think on paper, I think that should mean that all of the ingredients are really in place for a flourishing relationship. And indeed, New Delhi really welcomed Trump's second term with gusto. But as we have seen over the last year, almost immediately after Trump was reelected, that relationship started going south for various reasons we can talk about. And so I think Marco Rubio's trip to India was really meant to reassure the Indian leadership about the importance and the centrality of India to U.S. foreign policy and to try to right the ship a little bit after a very tough year.
Dhruva Jaishankar: But, you know, we can get into bit more of the substance of what was discussed, including the Quad that is India also hosted along with Secretary Rubio. The Foreign Ministers of Australia and Japan as well for a four-country meeting for the first time since July of last year. But what's your read on just like the mood? Tt seemed to be just going off of social media and even the traditional media, cable news and stuff in India, that the reception Ruby received wasn't, probably warmer than maybe some other U.S. leaders would have received, but certainly not as enthusiastic as it might have otherwise been. Is that your sense that he helped change the conversation a little bit on the U.S.-India relationship?
Rachel Rizzo: I think there's a lot of skepticism here about how much it actually did. When we talk about the sort of down, not the downfall of the U.S.-India relationship, but certainly the souring of it after Trump's reelection last year, we often point to the tariff fiasco which started in April of last year. There was a Trump visit to New Delhi that was floated, promised, and then ultimately never delivered, which then left India scrambling to save its Quad leader summit by downgrading it to a foreign ministers meeting, you can talk about that. And then, add on top of that, U.S immigration crackdowns that have disproportionately hurt Indian workers and American overtures toward both Pakistan and China that have created a sense that the U.S. Secretary was always gonna arrive in India facing a skeptical audience. And I think that's what happened. I don't think there's any, you know, no one is living in a universe where they look at the U.S.-India relationship right now as the strongest it's ever been. Indeed, that is not where it is. But I do think putting all of that aside, it was an important visit. The developments that came out of it were important, but I think it depends on what happens here and into the future that will really set the stage on where this relationship goes for the last two and a half years of Trump's presidency.
And then, I wanted to ask you about this because you've been sort of watching the developments of the Quad meeting that, as I just mentioned, this is now the third Quad meeting at the foreign minister's level rather than leader level. There's a lot of discussions right now about wither the Quad, where is the Quad in Trump's foreign policy priorities. Where would you say this relationship is? Where does the Quad fall? What are some good news and bad news that you've been watching here?
Dhruva Jaishankar: Yeah, so just to dial things back a little bit, in the first Trump administration, the Quad was not just resurrected in 2017, but also elevated towards the end of that term to the foreign ministers level meeting. And at that time, Secretary of State Pompeo at the time kind of used it not just to talk to his counterparts from those countries, but kind of a little bit to also grandstand, it was kind of a signal to China. Right. And he was a little bit more bombastic about using in that term. The Biden administration kind of immediately elevated it to a leaders level summit and tried to sort of put some substance behind it, which is actually create working groups to advance particular objects. The Biden administration, obviously, just given their own dispensation worldview, focused much more on public goods and that sort of reassurance that this will be a way to reassure smaller countries in the Indo-Pacific that these are four countries that can work together on health security. This was in the wake of the pandemic on critical and emerging technologies, on maritime governance and things like that. When they came back, the second Trump administration started off with prioritizing the Quad. They had all the four foreign there for the inauguration of Trump. It was Rubio's first official engagement with the Quad meeting. And so it was meant to be a priority. have been, again, totally three foreign ministers meetings now under the second Trump administration, but no leadership level summit. And it's quite likely that this will end up becoming something where the four leaders do meet, but it's on the sidelines where they already are at the G20 at the UN Security Council, at the UN General Assembly meetings in September in New York, in other summits as well where they all happened to attend.
Now at this meeting, when you look over the joint statement, say three pieces of good news, one piece of not so good news. There was a pretty strong emphasis on economic security and pretty substantive developments there. The four countries agreed to cooperate more on energy markets, on increasing resilience and energy supply chains. And this is all in the wake of the Iran conflict. Also some work on critical minerals. On port infrastructure, they announced a project in Fiji where all four countries have some comparative advantages and some ongoing cooperation on undersea cables. So some pretty substantive cooperation on economic security issues, which actually seems to be driving, still animating the group. I think second, something that doesn't get a lot of attention is the strategic consultations that take place. And again, we saw, just reflected in their statement, talks that encompass the South China Sea, and agreement on these issues, concerns about North Korea's nuclear activities, the conflict in Myanmar, freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, counter-terrorism, something that both India and Australia in their own ways are seeking to prioritize, and transnational crime. So quite, again, a pretty substantive set of consultations on region-wide developments. And I'd say the third other sort of area of progress was maritime security, where India has operationalized some of its maritime domain awareness capabilities in conjunction with the Quad countries and the Indian Ocean. They've agreed to sort of do more real times, maritime surveillance cooperation. They are continuing to cooperate on logistics and humanitarian assistance. So again, some substantive progress there. Where there wasn't a lot of substantive progress was on critical and emerging technologies. I think it's for a few reasons. One, the U.S. is being more unilateral about AI and emerging technologies. It's a very heated competition with China on AI particularly. And then some things have been subsumed under a grouping called Pax Silica, U.S. led grouping at the state US State Department, at which all four Quad countries are signatories and members. So it includes other countries, the UAE, Israel, Sweden, a few others as well. And that's the US sees it as really a way of cooperating on the full stack diplomatically
Rachel Rizzo: Yeah.
Dhruva Jaishankar: with these trusted partners and allies. So in some ways, the quad critical, it seemed again, reading the statement that the quad critical mineral cooperation, ⁓ critical emerging technology cooperation has kind of been subsumed under PAX silica.
Rachel Rizzo: So on top of all this, mean, some of the other outcomes that Marco Rubio got on the bilateral front, you know, India announced that it would commit to purchasing $500 billion of US goods over the next five years, focusing on energy, tech and agriculture. There was a bilateral critical minerals framework signed with the external affairs minister. This is meant to secure, you know, supply, mining and processing of critical minerals and rare earths elements. So when you take these together, would you say that overall, when you combine the bilateral meeting with the quad meeting, this was a successful trip for him?
Dhruva Jaishankar: I mean, think there was substantive progress. I think the challenge has been, and it's something I think we'll talk about in future episodes as well, like the workman-like aspects of the U.S.-India relationship and the Quad relationship have continued, in what has otherwise been a politically turbulent year despite tariffs, despite the adverse politics. But I think what is missing and what is going to take some time to repair, if it happens at all, is the sort political trust and the optics
Rachel Rizzo: Yeah.
Dhruva Jaishankar: of the relationship. I think, again, you have a sort of twin track approach, and maybe parallels of this in the transatlantic space
Rachel Rizzo: Exactly.
Dhruva Jaishankar: as well, where some engagements sometimes even in certain areas, and yet there is that deep distrust that has now been imbued in the United States' external engagements.
Well, a more to talk about. Yeah, a lot more to happen.
Rachel Rizzo: Absolutely. Lots to follow, as always. There's never a slow week.
Ebola Returns: How India-Africa Ties will Evolve with Veda Vaidyanathan
Rachel Rizzo: So lots going on in the world and we also are kind of switching continents again today and we have a special guest with us to talk about the planned India-Africa summit that was postponed because of the Ebola outbreak. So we'll go ahead and move into that conversation now.
Dhruva Jaishankar: Today we're very pleased to have Veda Vaidyanathan joining us on the Around the World podcast. She is a fellow at the Center for Social and Economic Progress, CSEP, a think tank based in New Delhi. And she examines Indian and Asian engagement in Africa, including in financial services, mining, agriculture, and infrastructure. She's done field work in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, across Africa. So Veda, thank you for joining us. We had planned to talk about something that was going to take place this weekend, which is this India-Africa summit, which is held periodically. I recall one was held in 2015 and one more since. But it's been canceled because of an Ebola outbreak in the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. So maybe talk to us first a little bit about this India Africa summit that's not been held, what it was meant to achieve. And maybe also talk a little bit about what this means about the seriousness of the Ebola outbreak.
Veda Vaidyanathan: Sure, first of all, thank you for having me. Dhruva and Rachel, it's really great to be here. And yeah, it's kind of unfortunate that the summit didn't happen this year because it was supposed to happen after a gap of 11 years. And a few days ago, I was actually reading through the 2015 declaration that came out from the last forum summit. And you couldn't help but notice that the world was very different. It was a pre-pandemic, pre-AI world. So I think there's a lot of catching up to do with this summit. And because I think the strengths that India brings to the table now are different, African priorities have changed so much, the world has changed so much. So I think this summit, the idea was there were going to be 11 or 12 pillars from health and digital infrastructure and critical minerals. And I think there was quite a lot of confidence that there are going to be very specific outcomes that came out of each of these pillars. And it was supposed to sort of set the tone for what this new era of engagement was supposed to look like. And I think fundamentally for the African continent, this means, you know, as they are moving towards an engagement, which is beyond aid, as African countries sort of assert their agency a lot more, we were going to see new forms of engagement, new instruments of engagement. And so hopefully it will happen soon once the pandemic sort of settles down.
Dhruva Jaishankar: A quick thing, how many leaders from Africa were expected to attend? Because I recall in 2015 about 40 of the 50 something, 52 African leaders, something like that, did attend the summit in India. How many were to come?
Veda Vaidyanathan: I mean, I've heard versions of this, anywhere from 26 to 35 was numbers that heard. But if not head of state, at the top ministerial levels, I think there was supposed to be over 50 ministers, actually. So it was a big summit.
Dhruva Jaishankar: Okay, and so we didn't know, and now there's no current plans for rescheduling it. It's indefinitely postponed.
Veda Vaidyanathan: Not that I know of, because we had an India Africa summit, like in an event on the sidelines of the summit a few days before this announcement came out. And the secretary was there giving his opening remarks and there was no sign of any kind of postponement. So it was kind of last minute. And a lot of other think tanks in Delhi have also had events around this. ICWA, for instance, had huge track two planned the day after this was announced. So I think this kind of wasn't planned, the postponement. I think the extent of the Ebola crisis probably made that last minute decision.
Rachel Rizzo: Are you, I mean, when it comes to the Ebola crisis and the way that this has changed, for example, this summit that was supposed to happen and it was canceled, has it sort of changed or will it change Delhi's approach to this region in Africa both now and in the future? Like how does India sort of calibrate a moment like this and decide how it gets involved and helps, et cetera, et cetera.
Veda Vaidyanathan: I think actually health has been one of the pillars where India has substantially sort of built engagement down in Africa. A few years ago, actually no, many years ago in 2019, I traveled around Ethiopia and Kenya to interview Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers and the amount of small scale, medium scale, large scale Indian manufacturers that were present in those regions were huge. So India's had a role to play when it's come to the health governance in the continent. But in this case specifically, I think Congo is this outbreak is important because this is not the first time Congo is battling this. I think this is the 17th or the 18th outbreak of Ebola that Congo has seen and is usually a different strain of the virus. This is the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, which is much rarer. There's no vaccine for this. It's also happening at a time when, you know, Western funding cuts have happened in the region. The U.S. has pulled out of the WHO. USAID has shut down. This is impacted vaccine preparedness, pandemic preparedness. Clinics have shut down. Health workers have disappeared. There's also a conflict happening. There's also effects of climate change. So it's a multitude of factors which makes this, it's not just a pandemic. It's actually a scenario which India has to not just look at the health outcomes, but also the geopolitics around it. And what it really does, I think, is really sort of push New Delhi to think a little harder on how the health cooperation should evolve moving forward. And this could come up with certain opportunities as well. For instance, you know, like the roles that we can play in even simple things like delivering better diagnostic skills, better surveillance. There's been a lot of writing coming out of the Congo on how biosafety level four labs haven't been built the way they should be. So there's an infrastructure gap, a financing gap, perhaps there are more substantive ways in which India could also expand its health cooperation with the continent.
Dhruva Jaishankar: I want to come back to India in a bit, but just you mentioned the geopolitical implications of the Ebola outbreak. What do you see as some of the possible geopolitical implications of it?
Veda Vaidyanathan: I think there's two fronts. One is we had a conference in Feb in Addis Ababa and we had some folks like for instance from Amref Health talking about the geopolitical consequences of the changing landscape in Africa. And one of the things that came out which is very interesting is they said, you know, we knew these funding cuts were going to happen. This didn't come out of nowhere, right? We knew that Western aid donors are going to pull out in the way they did. But I think it's the shock of how exactly and how quickly it happened that probably took people by surprise. So I think one aspect of it is, I think in the short term what it has done is there's not been time to recalibrate and build bridges with the gaps that have come. And in the long term, I think it's a larger questions of who's going to fill the financing gap. Because a lot of the health governance and a lot of the CDC, for instance, funding still comes from the West. So I think those questions remain largely unanswered.
Dhruva Jaishankar: Going back, zooming out a little bit to India, you mentioned health as one area. Maybe just describe and sketch it out because we have lot of listeners who are not as familiar with India and certainly not with India-Africa engagement. What are the main characteristics of India's engagement with Africa?
Veda Vaidyanathan: I think the first thing is, it's the relationship, I mean, the historic foundations of the relationship were built by economic agents, right? Even back pre-colonial era, you had traders go from the Western coast of India to the Eastern coast of Africa, and that kind of largely remains. And I think a very, maybe not a very scientific, but one metric of that is we've had three India-Africa Forum summits, political summits, but for instance, the TII, which is a Confederation of Indian Industry, has had like 18 conclaves or 17 conclaves in the last 18 years. So almost every year there's been a business conclave. And these are huge events, right? There are over 40 African countries that present this ministerial level representation. Thousands of delegates from Africa and India meet. And then this is the national level conclave. And then there are regional conclaves as well. So I think one is this continent is seen as one of a lot of economic opportunities for several Indian companies. So of course there's the Tata's and the Mahindra's and the Airtel Bharti, know, the Airtel Telecommunication Company, which is present in over 14 African countries. But there are also medium and small scale industries, medium scale industries, once they are successful in India and they want to go global, usually one of the regions that they choose to go to is some country in East Africa. Largely because these markets are smaller. So it's not just, you're not just talking about Ethiopia or Kenya, you're talking about the larger East African regional economic markets. But also because then Africa becomes a launch pad to export to Europe and the US and so on. So the big part of the equation has been economic. But then, of course, there's also a political angle to it, right? As India sort of becomes and sort of gains this Global South's leadership voice, countries in Africa become very important in that endeavor. Then there's also this huge thing of energy and critical minerals. Like we get over 10%, 11 % of our oil from the region. And now critical minerals, right? Because it's a huge conversation. And what we're seeing is with access to minerals becoming not just an economic security issue, it's becoming an industrial, you know, economic issue. It's also becoming a developmental sort of a conversation. And a lot of mineral producing countries in Africa are coming out with their own laws and their own regulations when it comes to exporting of minerals in their raw form. So you see a new sort of conversation around energy. And then of course, there's the security dimension to it. It's a huge market for Indian arms. DADA recently started its first manufacturing overseas project in Morocco, a defense manufacturing
Dhruva Jaishankar: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Veda Vaidyanathan: thing. And then there's also the developmental aspects of it. A lot of Indian capacity building initiatives, a lot of the health initiatives, a lot of educational things, like for instance, IIT Zanzibar has a campus now, IIT Madras has a campus in Zanzibar. So I think.
Dhruva Jaishankar: A campus in Zanzibar, yeah.
Veda Vaidyanathan: Yeah, so like development and defense and trade and economics and also the fact that there's three million strong in the diaspora in Africa as well. So those are the traditional sort of areas where India sort of had a presence.
Rachel Rizzo: Can you talk a little bit, I mean, in the U.S, when we talk about American engagement in Africa, investment in Africa, cooperation with different countries, with different corporations, China is obviously looming large over that conversation. Whether you agree with that approach or not, that's just the reality of the conversation in Washington sometimes. How does China fit into this conversation with India? How does India's approach differ or compare to that of China's, or do you see sort of an inter India-China competition playing out in Africa the way you do with the US and China?
Veda Vaidyanathan: Before I joined CSEP, I was at the Institute of Chinese Studies before Princeton, and I spent a few years going to Chinese assets in Tanzania and Kenya and trying to study them a little bit in depth. And the big question was, how are they able to do what they're able to do at the scale and the price points that they are?
Rachel Rizzo: Yeah.
Veda Vaidyanathan: And I think one of the things that really struck me was the conversations and a lot of African capitals was so different from DC. China the big alternative, right? And I say this anecdote sometimes, we were in this place five hours out of Addis, Bolkite, and we were going up this mountain and the bus stopped at the edge of the hill, right at the bottom of the hill, and people got off the bus, walked up the hill. The road was Chinese. It was paid by a Chinese company. The bus was a Chinese-made bus. And people were telling me, you know, this bus can't take everyone in one go to the top because its engines are not as strong and this road might not be here after the rainy season. And I was like, doesn't that make you mad? And then this gentleman said, at least there's a bus and there's a road, right? So I think the big sentiment at least 10 years ago, which is very China positive in the continent. Now the conversation shift that I see is China is still not the villain in a lot of these conversations. It is still the provider of alternatives, but there's a strong interest to diversify partnerships. And that's where countries like, you know, states in the Gulf and India and Turkey and ASEAN countries and Singapore and Malaysia, who've been actually slowly incrementally increasing their economic presence on the continent sort of really align, because India compared to a lot of these other partners have been in the continent, have been present on the continent for centuries, for decades. For instance, we have the Japanese recently telling us that a lot of Japanese companies are very risk averse about going into a lot of these African markets, but are looking to find Indian companies to work with in a lot of these spaces only because there is a perception that Indian companies and Indian entities are more familiar with a lot of these informal setups. So I think we should completely remove this idea of competition with China. We're talking about a different scale. We're talking about very different comparative advantages. India, for instance, should not be and is not looking to build, let's say for instance, an India corridor that links East of Africa to West of Africa, right. But there's a whole, there's like a $130 billion infrastructure deficit in the continent. So everything from energy transmission lines to smaller places where we can actually build substantive sort of entry points exist. So the question should be really that even with the larger ecosystems, if you take infrastructure or critical minerals, where are the gaps and what are India's comparative advantages? And where can we actually go in and execute and implement in a very time-bound manner? And I think what this means then is the confluence of India's strategic objectives and its economic. Because you already have Larsen and Toubros and Shapoorji Pallonjis operating on the ground. It’s the question of sort of bringing them together, breaking the silos and finding ways to sort of work together? If that answers your question.
Dhruva Jaishankar: One final. Yeah, it’s a great answer. One final question from me. We've been having lot of discussions about Africa actually here in Washington as well over the past few years, including in the World Bank IMF meetings a few weeks ago. And one of the things that it keeps coming back to is individual African countries have increased agency, are doing a lot more, some are showing some tremendous economic progress, yet they don't have a natural political leader and they are also very regionally divided and then don't offer the scale. So maybe talk a little bit, do you see a sort of growth below Africa, when we talk about Africa as a single unit, but do you see sort of regional clusters emerging in Africa that are more promising for some of the areas you've talked about, could that have political implications as well?
Veda Vaidyanathan: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think this fragmentation you see, like for instance, the AFTA, I mean, ideally in an ideal after should have been up and running.
Dhruva Jaishankar: AFTA being the Africa Free Trade Agreement, correct? It's continent-wide.
Veda Vaidyanathan: Yes, the continental free trade agreement. The implementation has been much slower than anticipated. And I think that largely comes from, you know, there are these big economies which are usually, you know, have a huge sway over the agenda and then there are smaller companies that bring in much, that bring in different strengths, let's say. So I think one big, even in terms of imagining these partnerships, one big model of doing this is taking a country cluster approach as opposed to an individual country approach. There is some sense in that. For instance, even setting up like manufacturing basis. It makes sense to think of DRC-Zambia. You know, it makes sense to think of a few countries and a few regional blocks and say, okay, how do we try and work together? But of course that comes with its own challenges, right? You're then negotiating with multiple countries. There's questions of what each brings to the table, what are they getting from this and so on. And I think so it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. I think in some areas that we are trying to build cooperation, it really makes sense, like you mentioned, to think of a regional approach. But in some cases, it has to just be bilateral because it's just so much better and so much easier to work through. And there's been successes on a bilateral level. And at this point, at this moment in time, the big question is not just the ideas, right? Those fantastic, wonderful ideas, but it's about really executing them on the ground very quickly.
Dhruva Jaishankar: Thank you so much, Vida, for joining us on the Around the World podcast. And hopefully we'll have a lot more on India and Africa and much more related to your research in the weeks, months, and years ahead. Thanks again for joining us.
Veda Vaidyanathan: Thank you so much for having me.
Rachel Rizzo: Thank you.
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