Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent bilateral meetings with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on the sidelines of the New Delhi BRICS summit have exposed a calculated shift in India's foreign policy. For decades, New Delhi managed its international partnerships through non-aligned caution and a heavy reliance on traditional trade metrics. Today, that playbook is gone. Behind closed doors in the capital, India is actively positioning itself as an alternative security provider and a high-tech manufacturing hub for the Global South.
The core takeaway from these high-stakes diplomatic exchanges is straightforward. India is no longer content being just a massive consumer market or a passive multilateral participant. New Delhi is aggressively pushing its indigenous defence hardware, semiconductor supply chains, and industrial investments into emerging economies. Ethiopia wants Indian mining and security expertise. Malaysia is eyeing semiconductor collaboration and advanced aerospace defence systems like the BrahMos missile. Learn more on a related issue: this related article.
Yet, translating diplomatic handshakes into long-term commercial dominance requires navigating heavy structural hurdles that most mainstream reports gloss over.
The Mechanics of South-South Defence Trade
Selling military hardware to developing nations is vastly different from selling consumer electronics or software. It involves decades-long supply chains, trust, geopolitical alignment, and continuous maintenance logistics. More reporting by The Washington Post explores related views on this issue.
When nations like Ethiopia and Malaysia express interest in joint personnel training and equipment procurement from Indian firms, they are attempting to diversify away from traditional Western and legacy Eastern European suppliers. For Ethiopia, internal security challenges demand reliable, cost-effective military hardware and training that do not come with the suffocating political conditionalities often attached to Western aid packages.
India's appeal lies in its cost-to-capability ratio. Systems like the Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher, Akash air defence networks, and various radar tracking platforms have transitioned from experimental domestic projects into combat-tested export commodities. Armenia’s significant acquisition of Indian artillery and rocket systems over recent years served as the proving ground. That success gave New Delhi the credibility needed to pitch similar packages to African and Southeast Asian states.
However, scaling this up is fraught with friction. State-owned defense manufacturing in India has historically suffered from bureaucratic delays, intellectual property transfer bottlenecks, and long delivery backlogs. If New Delhi wants to capture the Ethiopian and Malaysian markets permanently, private defense manufacturing must step in to bridge the execution gap. State intent alone cannot manufacture spare parts on schedule.
Semiconductors and the Malaysia Factor
While defence grab headlines, the economic undercurrents of Modi's meeting with Malaysia's Anwar Ibrahim reveal an equally ambitious play in the technology sector. Malaysia is already an established node in the global semiconductor assembly, testing, and packaging grid. India, meanwhile, is pouring billions into subsidies to construct its own domestic chip fabrication and packaging ecosystem.
Instead of viewing each other as competitors in a zero-sum race, New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur are sketching out a complementary supply chain. Workforce development, specialized engineering talent sharing, and supply-chain resilience dominated the agenda.
The reality of the global chip market is brutal. Dominated by a handful of geographic monopolies, breaking into high-end silicon fabrication requires absolute consistency in power supply, ultra-pure water resources, and an immense engineering talent pool. By partnering with Malaysia, India is attempting to fast-track its learning curve. Malaysian firms possess decades of institutional knowledge in backend semiconductor operations that cannot be replicated overnight simply by throwing capital at greenfield projects.
Resource Geopolitics and the African Horizon
On the other side of the Indian Ocean, the engagement with Ethiopia brings natural resources into sharp focus. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration explicitly welcomed deeper participation from Indian mining corporations during the BRICS sidelines.
Critical minerals and industrial metals form the physical foundation of the modern green economy and advanced defense electronics. Securing extraction rights and joint exploration ventures in resource-rich African nations is a defensive necessity for New Delhi. As major global powers scramble to lock down supply chains for rare earths and essential minerals, India's entry into the Ethiopian mining sector represents a classic resource-security play.
Yet, operating in resource-rich developing nations carries acute operational risks. Infrastructure deficits, local regulatory shifts, and regional security volatility can turn a lucrative mining concession into a financial liability. Indian firms accustomed to domestic bureaucratic hurdles will find that Ethiopian operations demand a high tolerance for operational uncertainty and community relations management.
The Structural Realities Ahead
The high-level optics of the BRICS summit successfully projected an image of rising multi-polar cooperation. Nations burdened by traditional superpower hegemony are actively seeking third-party alternatives for trade, security, and technology.
The transition from strategic dialogue to permanent economic integration rests entirely on execution. India’s private sector must prove it can deliver hardware on time, maintain rigorous quality control, and absorb foreign regulatory complexities without relying solely on state-level goodwill.
The architecture for a broader trade and security corridor between India, East Africa, and Southeast Asia has been laid out in these bilateral rooms. Whether it transforms into an enduring economic bloc or remains a series of unfulfilled memorandums depends entirely on how swiftly New Delhi can overhaul its manufacturing efficiency and project delivery speeds.
