India and Africa have been sharing a multidimensional relationship of cooperation and friendship since the ancient civilizations. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new possibilities and opportunities for India to leverage its soft power diplomacy towards Africa. The paper’s main focus is to analyze how India has made soft power part of its foreign policy and examine India’s relationship with the African continent through health diplomacy. A literature search was done in major databases, such as Web of Science, Medicine/PubMed, Scopus, OVID, and Google Scholar search engine to gather relevant information. Through humanitarian assistance and geopolitical influence, India had won the support and heart of Africans. Besides, India has become a global healthcare provider in the African continent through its global health diplomacy and vaccine diplomacy. India has achieved impressive gains through its soft power diplomacy and has become a compassionate and benevolent actor in the African continent.

The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic had left heart-wrenching impacts on all facets of life in general and the availability, accessibility, and affordability of medicines and vaccines in particular. Rather, the world has been divided into two groups regarding access to medicine and vaccines as haves and have-nots. The rich countries had pre-ordered the vaccines of COVID-19 along with the holding of the same. The pandemic situation was further worsened, given the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in practice and restrictions on sharing technology of vaccines, medicines, and life-saving equipment. In this context, India and South Africa have proposed the joint proposal and garnered support for waiving off TRIPS to ensure equity, accessibility, and affordability of vaccines and the same as public goods. In this review, we emphasize that global justice is one of the important elements of normative international theories, which focus on all the moral obligations from the world’s rich to the world’s poor. The paper also questions and argues that if the rich countries fail to go by the principles of global justice, can the Indian and South African (SA) patent diplomacy play a catalyst role in global justice? The review concludes with an emphasis on global solidarity, and the acceptance of joint India–South Africa’s “patent diplomacy” for TRIPS waiver would result in mass production and fair distribution, making the COVID-19 medicines and technologies available to everyone regardless of their poor–rich status.

In recent years, India has established itself as the world’s ‘pharmacy hub’, and this claim was proven once again when it delivered COVID-19 vaccines to its citizens, neighbouring nations and across the globe. Following the philosophy of humanitarianism through the principle of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, India has decided to provide the COVID-19 health assistance to its immediate neighbouring countries. India’s immediate neighbourhood refers to the countries that are geographically adjacent to it. In addition, India’s vaccine diplomacy has exposed geopolitical fault lines in South Asia as China’s vaccine diplomacy aims to outpace India in the region. Against this background, the main objective of this paper is to explain and examine India’s vaccine diplomacy as an instrument of its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that India’s health-focused approach has proved effective and aligned with its national interests. This review demonstrates that India’s health diplomacy has had an impact on medical and humanitarian assistance reciprocation at the regional and international levels. As a result of this strategy, during the second wave of the pandemic, India received medical devices and vaccines from other countries in dealing with COVID-19.

The ongoing pandemic COVID-19 has made it very clear that no one is safe until everyone is safe. But how can everyone be safe when the pandemic has broken every nerve of the economy and put an extra burden on the already crippled healthcare systems in low-income countries? Thus, the pandemic has changed the orientation of domestic as well as global politics, with many geopolitical shifts. The exponential growing infected cases and more than four million deaths has demanded a global response in terms of multilateralism. However, declining multilateralism and the need for its reforms was a much-delayed response. Given this context, this paper aimed to link the decline of multilateralism in the face of the pandemic by highlighting various instances of its failure and success; and highlighting the need for its revival. The article critically examines and evaluates the responses of multilateralism and global health diplomacy (GHD) during the pandemic. The ongoing black swan kind of event (an unexpected event) has obligated global leadership to think in terms of the revival of multilateralism through GHD. Historically, multilateralism through GHD has been shown to play an important role in managing and combating pandemics. The article further discusses various theoretical aspects such as sovereignty and hegemonic stability theory as reasons for the failing of multilateralism. The paper concludes by emphasizing the importance of foresight in reviving multilateralism in the pursuit of a more sustainable future.

The African continent is home to 15% of the world’s population and suffers from a disease burden of more than 25% globally. In this COVID-19 era, the high burden and mortality are further worsened due to inequities, inequalities such as inadequate health systems, scarce financial and human resources, as well as unavailability of inexpensive medicines of good quality, safety, and efficacy. The Universal Health Coverage ensures that people have access to high-quality essential health services, secure, reliable, and affordable essential medicines and vaccines, as well as financial security. This paper aimed at addressing the critical need for a continental African Medicines Agency (AMA) in addressing the inequities and the role of global health diplomacy in building consensus to support the ratification of the Treaty of AMA. A literature review was done in Scopus, Web of Science, MEDLINE/PubMed, and Google Scholar search engine to identify the critical literature in the context of study objectives. All the articles published after 2015 till 2021 in the context of AMA were included. African Health Strategy 2016–2030 highlighted the importance of an African regulatory mechanism for medicines and medical products. Through global health diplomacy (GHD), the African Union and its partners can negotiate and cooperate in providing infrastructural, administrative, and regulatory support for establishing the AMA. The paper emphasizes the South–South cooperation and highlights the contributions of India and China in the supply of medicines and vaccines to Africa. A strong AMA created through GHD can be a vital instrument in utilizing Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) flexibilities extension and an ideal partner for European and other regional regulatory authorities seeking to stem the tide of counterfeit, sub-standard, or fake products.