Abstract A growing debate concerns the developmental implications of booming relations between ‘Southern’ powers and countries across Africa. Whilst mainstream commentary worries about nefarious influences, others explore supposedly increasing ‘African agency’, a term capturing the ability of African states to define their international relations. South-South Cooperation, given its supposed principles asserting sovereignty, non-interventionism, and demand-led projects, is understood to boost such agency. This article analyses such claims with a detailed case study of Indian governmental infrastructure financing in Africa, the Nyabarongo Dam in Rwanda, filling a significant gap concerning under-researched India–Africa relations. Originally, South-South cooperation was rooted in a programme that combined technical cooperation with a radical political critique of global power and a call for reform. However, this study of India’s concessional finance suggests that in its twenty-first century manifestation, South-South Cooperation is often decoupled from a political programme, leaving only open-ended, depoliticized state-to-state cooperation initiatives. The article demonstrates that whilst India’s development cooperation generated useful opportunities, it acted to empower companies and exacerbated the Rwandan state’s structural regulatory weaknesses. The article traces this to the policymaking practices of India’s development cooperation, showing that a decoupling of political ambitions results in a narrow state-to-state focus with an abdication of responsibility for development outcomes, marginalizing accountability to average African citizens.

中文翻译：

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印度在非洲的基础设施建设：南南合作与责任抽象

摘要 越来越多的争论涉及“南方”大国与非洲国家之间蓬勃发展的关系对发展的影响。虽然主流评论担心邪恶的影响，但其他人则探讨了所谓的“非洲代理”，这是一个捕捉非洲国家定义其国际关系的能力的术语。鉴于南南合作主张主权、不干涉主义和以需求为导向的项目的假定原则，南南合作被认为可以促进这种机构的发展。本文通过对印度政府在非洲的基础设施融资、卢旺达的 Nyabarongo 大坝的详细案例研究分析了此类主张，填补了有关印非关系研究不足的重大空白。起初，南南合作植根于一项计划，该计划将技术合作与对全球权力的激进政治批评和改革呼吁相结合。然而，这项对印度优惠金融的研究表明，在其 21 世纪的表现中，南南合作通常与政治计划脱钩，只留下开放式、非政治化的国家间合作倡议。文章表明，虽然印度的发展合作创造了有用的机会，但它赋予了公司权力，并加剧了卢旺达国家的结构性监管弱点。文章将此追溯到印度发展合作的决策实践，