Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja

Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Nagabhushana Reddy, has estimated the Indian investment in Nigeria to the tune of $10 billion.

Reddy gave the figures yesterday in Abuja during the celebration of India’s 72nd Independence Day anniversary.

The amount, according to Reddy, formed the chunk of the overall Indian investment in Africa which was estimated at $54 billion.

He recalled the significant developments in the India-Africa engagements, chief amongst was the recent visit of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa and also attended the BRICS summit.

He said the announcement made by Modi during the visit, qualified to be determined as the quantum shift of India’s engagement with Africa for many reasons.

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“It was not long ago, in fact, our prime minister, in his speech, announced that India will open 18 new resident Indian embassies in Africa which means, currently we have 29 countries we have resident missions like in Nigeria, we will open 18 more, which means it will take us to 47 out of the 54 African countries and this will take place in the coming two to three years,” Reddy said.

Reddy further said the bilateral trade between India and the entire African continent increased to $62 billion, saying that $12 billion went to Nigeria alone, which he said, represented close to one-fifth of the amount.

Reddy also said about 8,000 African nationals were currently trained by the Indian government in different institutions of high learning on various capacity building programmes.