Before President Biden meeting, PM Modi to meet Mauritius PM and African Union head during G20

There is consensus among G20 nations over sustainable development and food security but political navigation is required to address Ukraine debate.

Updated on: Sep 5, 2023, 08:49:50 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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As the Narendra Modi government gears up for the G20 Summit this weekend, the Indian Prime Minister will hold bilateral conversations with Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina followed by his scheduled meeting cum dinner with US President Joe Biden on Friday.

File photo of PM Narendra Modi with Mauritius Prime MInister Pravind Jagnauth.

He will meet French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday and hold talks with Comoros President Azali Assoumani as chairperson of the African Union also during the summit weekend. It was at PM Modi instance that the African Union was invited to the G20 Summit with India focusing on economic growth and development of pandemic-hit Global South. African nations are reeling under Belt Road Initiative debt with Chinese EXIM banks swapping debt for equity in major infrastructure projects like ports, rail roads and highways in that continent.

Even though PM Modi will be hard-pressed for time as the host, there is a possibility of more bilateral meetings during the summit provided the travel schedules of the VVIP visitors match.

It is understood that the G20 Sherpa and secretariat briefed PM Modi about all the relevant issues of the summit and a briefing of the Union Council of Ministers is scheduled before the summit kicks off.

While work is in progress on the G20 communique, the leaders will have to navigate on geo-political issues like Ukraine and Climate Change even though the G-20 ‘s main charter is economic growth and development. The two issues that will be taken up for Ministers and summit leaders to negotiate and seal are Ukraine and the debate of phasing out coal versus other fossil fuels for addressing climate change. Even though the coal versus other fossil fuels debate is the topic for COP28 in Dubai later this November-December in Dubai in UAE, the topic will be hotly debated with the summit expected to reach a green development understanding with defined green goals. There appears to be a broad consensus over focusing on sustainable development goals and promoting millets for global food security.

On his part, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is committed to the economic upliftment of the global south with a special focus on Africa, which has been worst hit by the global pandemic and is in need of assistance from the G20 group to recover and counter political instability sweeping parts of the continent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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