When Ibrahim Traoré addressed the Russia-Africa Summit in July 2023, his message resonated beyond his role as Burkina Faso’s 35-year-old president. His central argument demands attention from every developing nation, including India: Africa’s poverty exists not despite its mineral wealth, but because of it.
Africa holds 30 percent of global mineral reserves. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces two-thirds of the world’s cobalt. Yet four in ten Africans live below the poverty line. This paradox mirrors patterns India experienced during colonial rule and continues navigating today.
The Resource Curse Mechanism
Economists document the resource curse—natural resource abundance correlating with slower economic growth. Research shows that Africa faces ongoing economic dominance through mechanisms perpetuating dependency despite formal sovereignty.
The mechanics operate through multiple channels. Resource-dependent economies become vulnerable to commodity price fluctuations. According to IMF analyses, Africa collects significantly less in resource rents than other regions, missing approximately 1.7 percent of GDP in potential tax and royalty income. This gap persists even though mineral resources account for 30 percent of government revenues in resource-rich countries.
The Democratic Republic of Congo exemplifies these dynamics, where foreign corporations control extraction networks. At the same time, local populations receive minimal benefits and bear environmental costs, including water contamination, soil degradation, and air pollution.
India’s Colonial Parallels
India’s experience provides instructive parallels. British policies systematically deindustrialized India, with handloom yarn output declining from 419 million pounds in 1850 to 240 million pounds by 1900. Economic historian Dadabhai Naoroji documented the systematic wealth drain that fueled British industrialization. Famines from 1850 to 1900 resulted in over 28 million deaths—direct consequences of extraction-focused policies prioritizing cash crops over food security.
Recent research from UCLA and Washington University demonstrates that British exploitation continues to affect economic opportunity today. Regions under direct British rule show significantly less private investment, with lower-caste households in early-annexed regions 69 percent more likely to lack formal education—lingering effects of systematic human capital destruction.
Post-independence, India initially embraced self-reliance. Prime Minister Nehru argued that dependence risked reducing Indians to servitude again. This philosophy guided the establishment of heavy industries, IITs, and the Green Revolution, which transformed India from a grain importer to achieving food self-sufficiency, with food grain production increasing from 50 million tonnes in 1950-51 to over 314 million tonnes by 2021-22.
Sankara’s Revolutionary Legacy
Traoré draws inspiration from Thomas Sankara, Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader from 1983 to 1987. Sankara’s brief tenure demonstrated what political will could achieve. His administration vaccinated 2.5 million children, increased literacy rates from 13 to 73 percent, and planted over 10 million trees to combat desertification—all without foreign aid.
Sankara championed what he termed the people’s democratic revolution, with objectives including eradicating corruption, empowering women, and expanding access to education, while rejecting imperial domination. His declaration at the Organization of African Unity that Africa would not pay its debt represented a principled rejection of financial instruments perpetuating dependency. This legacy Traoré now invokes when declaring that Burkina Faso cannot be developed outside Sankara’s vision.
India’s Contemporary Approach
India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, launched in May 2020, emphasizes economic self-reliance through enhanced domestic value addition. The government announced packages totaling approximately 10 percent of GDP to promote domestic production.
However, contemporary self-reliance differs from earlier protectionism. Prime Minister Modi clarified that self-reliance does not mean being self-centered. The approach recognizes India’s role in global development while maintaining independent decision-making capacity.
The framework rests on five pillars: Economy, Infrastructure, Systems based on 21st-century technology, Vibrant Demography, and Demand. Implementation includes the Production-Linked Incentive Scheme, covering 14 sectors and totaling approximately two trillion rupees, with a focus on electronics, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, automobiles, and specialty steel.
India pursues this alongside strategic autonomy in foreign policy—multi-alignment, engaging multiple powers based on national interests. India participates in the Quad alongside the United States, Japan, and Australia, while maintaining membership in the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar articulated this position: India aims to engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia, bring Japan into play, and extend neighborhood influence.
Strategic Imperatives from Africa’s Experience
Several principles emerge from examining Africa’s struggle for economic sovereignty.
First, resource sovereignty requires robust institutional capacity. India must ensure natural resources—from rare earth minerals to agricultural produce—are managed through strong domestic institutions. The National Critical Minerals Mission, exploring 1,200 sites for resources essential to energy and defense, represents movement in this direction.
Second, economic diversification remains non-negotiable. The commodity supercycle from 2004 to 2014 left African economies undiversified, where poverty worsened even as fiscal revenues rose. India’s stagnant growth through the 1970s demonstrates that self-reliance without efficiency produces limitations. The solution combines self-reliance with competitive excellence and technological advancement.
Third, regional cooperation amplifies sovereignty. The Alliance of Sahel States demonstrates how coordinated action creates bargaining power. The African Continental Free Trade Area, connecting 1.3 billion people with a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion, offers a template for building integrated value chains, retaining wealth domestically.
Fourth, human capital investment determines prosperity. Sankara’s emphasis on literacy, healthcare, and women’s empowerment reflected the understanding that natural resources alone cannot drive development. India’s successes in IT services, pharmaceuticals, and space technology stem from sustained education investments requiring acceleration.
Fifth, sustainable resource management must be central. Africa’s adoption of closed-loop water systems and advanced geological imaging demonstrates how environmental responsibility and economic benefit align. India’s industrialization must incorporate these lessons, avoiding ecological devastation plaguing African extraction zones.
Practical Applications
Resource management must ensure the critical minerals mission translates into domestic value addition—processing facilities, manufacturing capabilities, and research institutions must be produced domestically. Industrial policy through Production Linked Incentive schemes must emphasize technology transfer and capability building beyond manufacturing volume.
Agricultural self-reliance in fertilizer production is crucial for food security. Current import dependence leaves farmers vulnerable to global price volatility. Defense manufacturing, establishing indigenous production of weapons systems, reduces dependence, which can become leverage during crises. Developing digital infrastructure to build indigenous platforms ensures data sovereignty and protects against external information control.
Directional Sovereignty
Traoré’s speeches resonate because they articulate a fundamental truth: formal independence means nothing without economic sovereignty. For India, the African experience offers warning and inspiration—warning shows how resources can be extracted for centuries, leaving populations impoverished; inspiration demonstrates that conscious resistance, regional cooperation, and commitment to welfare can break these patterns.
India’s trajectory since 1991 liberalization reflects ongoing tensions between global integration and strategic autonomy. Current emphasis on Atmanirbhar Bharat echoes earlier ideals but must be implemented with awareness of historical mistakes and contemporary opportunities. Self-reliance in 2024 cannot mean isolation—it must mean developing capabilities enabling global engagement from strength rather than dependency.
Yet challenges persist. India’s workforce engagement rate dropped from 24 percent in 2024 to 19 percent in 2025, representing the steepest global decline. Labor market rigidity, with an 80 percent informal workforce, curtails productivity. Rising trade deficits, particularly with China, which reached $99.2 billion by 2024, highlight ongoing dependencies that require strategic management.
Wrap Up
The resource curse is not an inevitable fate but results from specific policy choices, institutional weaknesses, and power imbalances—all of which are addressable through concerted effort. India’s GDP share fell from 25 percent of world output in 1700 to 4 percent in 1947. Africa’s industrial modest production, despite containing 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves, reflects not natural limitations but the consequences of systematic exploitation.
The path forward requires learning from post-independence successes and continuing challenges. Understanding that mechanisms of neocolonialism remain active in subtler but equally effective forms is crucial. India’s pursuit of Atmanirbhar Bharat and strategic autonomy recognizes that genuine independence requires continuous vigilance and deliberate policy choices.
Traoré articulates a universal principle: freedom must be claimed, not granted. For India, this means examining whether policies serve genuine national interest or perpetuate dependency relationships inherited from colonialism. Understanding Africa’s paradox of plenty helps India direct its development path more effectively. Both continents share historical colonization, contemporary challenges balancing global integration with strategic autonomy, and future imperatives ensuring wealth serves their people. In this shared struggle lies opportunity for solidarity, mutual learning, and collective advancement toward prosperity that is both sustainable and sovereign.
The writer is Senior Research Scholar, Department of Earth Sciences, Pondicherry University. yunusbhatt586@gmail.com
