Indian diaspora in Africa

Sources from India show evidence of trade and contact between the Dravidians and Babylonians dating back to the 7th century B.C.

This evidence has been interpreted to understand Indian merchants and sailors having visited Southern Arabia, situated on the Eastern part of the Horn of Africa also known as the Somali peninsula.

Major clusters of Indians were taken as indentured laborers across colonial empires in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Estimates during the period of 1829-1924 suggest that about 769,427 Indians migrated out of India into Mauritius, South Africa, Seychelles, and the East African region.

Through this, European imperialists facilitated the transport of over 3.5 million Indians into the African continent where they served as labor for plantations.

States then started to encourage the forced migration of women, to meet growing demands for domestic, urban and plantation labor, and create a consistent population of indentured slaves directly into their economy.

Foreign in this thought, Indian emigration should be understood as synonymous with indentured servitude, which some argued ensured territorial expansion and provided opportunity for India's poor.

[1] Mohandas Gandhi, of South Africa, worked to abolish indentured servitude starting with his meeting with Gopal Krishna Gokhale.

As a Kenyan magazine, The Analyst, reported, “While official figures show only 1918 work permits issued from the Asian subcontinent in a three year period – 1995 (731), 1996 (703), and 1997 (484) – unconfirmed reports state that between 30,000 to 40,000 immigrant workers from the Asian subcontinent have entered Kenya in the last four years”[9] Official records of the Government of India note the increasing presence of Indian communities in the African continent.

The previous Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, recognized Africa as the growth pole of the world in 2011.