Professor Anil Sooklal and Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister, Shri Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu.
Image: Supplied
Professor Anil Sooklal, South Africa's High Commissioner to India, recently visited Himachal Pradesh to strengthen bilateral relations and foster partnerships between South Africa and the Indian state.
Sooklal, who has made a continuous agenda of visiting Indian states, emphasised the importance of enhancing visibility for South Africa.
“The more visibility we bring to South Africa, the more it helps us to build and strengthen relationships across India with our country, and, of course, closer people-to-people interaction. They’re very keen to know more about South Africa and learn about how we can strengthen relations,” Sooklal said.
During his visit, Sooklal met with Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Shri Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, who expressed his desire to visit South Africa.
Sukhu has an emotional bond to the country, stemming from his time as a student in Himachal Pradesh, where he was a key member of the university’s anti-apartheid committee supporting South Africa’s liberation struggle. He was invited to visit South Africa with a business delegation later this year.
“We identified some key sectors that they would like to explore, especially agriculture, agroprocessing, the ICT sector, data centres, and tourism,” Sooklal said.
Sooklal noted the similarities between South Africa and Himachal Pradesh regarding tourism. One of the areas that they believe they can cooperate on is adventure tourism, where South Africa is well established.
“This is an area where I believe South African companies can come and look at working in partnership, but also to get them to visit South Africa as inbound tourists, as they are very keen to popularise South Africa as a tourism destination. Adventure tourism is something that Indians like."
Sooklal added: “In terms of visiting our safari parks, our game parks, they don’t have big game, so there were a lot of questions about Kruger (National) Park and our other game parks to see how they can also promote more tourism.”
He added that they also sought collaboration to advance their game parks, leveraging South African expertise. Sooklal said that economically, Himachal Pradesh was one of the main producers of fruit and a Fruit SA delegation would visit India next month.
He said data centres were a key focus in South Africa, given the Indian expertise and the strength of Indian companies in this area.
"We also discussed the possibility of collaboration given that we are quite advanced in mining technology and expertise."
Sooklal said they started their tour in Chandigarh, where they addressed a business forum about opportunities in South Africa that was organised by the BRICS Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the Punjab. This prepared the way for the women’s BRICS Business Alliance delegation from South Africa, which will visit Punjab and Himachal Pradesh from March 19 to 25 to engage with the local business sector.
“These visits help us to demonstrate the vast opportunities in South Africa for investments by Indian companies. Increasingly, we find that not much is known about South Africa."
He said they also learned that India had a Speakers Forum and this year, it had chosen South Africa, specifically Cape Town.
During his visit, Sooklal gave a well-attended public lecture at Himachal Pradesh University, hosted by the Department of Political Science and Defence and Strategic Studies, where the audience was eager to learn about India-South Africa and India-Africa relations.
He also visited the Indian Institute for Advanced Study, a think tank, which is eager to host South African researchers and scholars, offering facilities and accommodation for studies on India-South Africa and India-Africa relations.