India can quadruple revenue from Africa by 2025: Report

India can quadruple revenue from Africa to USD 160 billion by 2025 through expanding its presence in sectors like information technology, agriculture, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals and consumer goods, says a McKinsey report.

"There is a large opportunity for Indian retailers in Africa, more in terms of apparel, fashion products, etc," Vice-Chairman of Trent Ltd, Noel Tata said at a CII event where this report was released. According to the report, India can aspire to capture almost 7 percent of the African IT services market, 5 percent of its FMCG space, 10 percent of the power sector and 2 to 5 percent of the agri-allied services.

"Returns to FDI in Africa in the last 5 years have been the highest in the world," Director at McKinsey & Company Rajat Gupta said. However, the report said that to be a true solutions partner for Africa, Indian industry needs to continually engage with governments and businesses, proactively surface opportunities, build an open consortia of interested companies and use funding from low cost countries like Japan for large projects where Indian cost of funds is a disadvantage.

"Areas where the Indian industry needs assistance are infrastructure and construction, to be able to access long-term funding for the projects we wish to participate in Africa. India is not the cheapest source of funds in the world. We need to find sources of third country funding," Tata added.