Online Desk: The issues surrounding the Adani Group and its deals in Kenya may be briefly absent from the front pages, but you can rest assured that they are not over. The Adani saga may look like the story of an Indian conglomerate with designs on making money in Kenya. The business has used less than transparent means and the connivance of well-heeled brokers and government officials.
However, I believe there may be more to the story than meets the eye, and the ties between the Adani Group, specifically Gautam Adani and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, play a significant part in the whole affair.
It is no secret that India, especially under Modi, has strategic national ambitions that involve the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) which includes the East African coastline from Somalia down to Mozambique, and island nations such as Mauritius.
A friend of mine and I have been a little obsessed with the Adani Group issue, and our discussions – based on publicly available information – have led me to suspect there is a bigger game at play than what is on the surface.
A recent conversation was sparked by this report on the BBC website. The report is about the tiny Indian Ocean island of Agalega, home to 350 people – mainly fishers and coconut farmers. Agalega is part of the Mauritius Archipelago and is 1,100 km north of Port Louis, the capital.
The BBC article highlights the fact that in 2015, Mauritius signed a deal enabling India to build a vast 3,000-metre runway as well as a big new jetty, as part of the two countries’ deepening collaboration on maritime security.
It has emerged that some Agalegans fear this could grow into a fully-fledged military presence as Agalega – two small islands covering 25 sq km – would be an ideal location for India to monitor marine traffic.
They are not alone. In a 2021 article titled “Naval-gazing in the Indian Ocean: Why Africa should worry”, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said, “Even the notion of an Indian military facility on Mauritius’s Agalega Island deserves regional and AU attention.”
The think-tank refers to the Agalega facility as a “surveillance station” and says it is likely to contain a coastal radar surveillance system similar to Indian-built equipment elsewhere in Mauritius.
