CAS hosts a delegation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Indonesia

The Director of the Junior Diplomatic School of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia, Lintang Paramitasari Parnohadiningrat Wibawa visited the NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies in February and held wide ranging talks with Centre Director Amit Jain.

Mr Jain briefed Ms Paramitasari on the work of the Centre. Ms Paramitasari sought to leverage the Centre’s expertise in training junior Indonesian diplomats on African issues and discussed the possibility of participation at the second Indonesia-Africa Forum in September. Her visit comes a little over six months after President Joko Widodo’s historic visit to four African countries– the first ever by an Indonesian head of state to the continent. The Indonesian President’s five-day visit took him to Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, before finishing in South Africa where he attended the meeting of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group of nations in Johannesburg. During his address to the BRICS conference President Jokowi evoked the ‘spirit of Bandung’ – the landmark Asia-Africa conference held in the West Java capital in 1955 and called for solidarity and cooperation between the nations of the Global South. Jakarta is seeking to build stronger economic ties with the African continent as it emerges as a rising middle power in Asia.