Raghvendra Kumar is a Non-Resident Fellow in FPRI’s Asia Program and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of International Relations and Peace Studies, Nalanda University, Rajgir, Bihar, India. He holds a PhD and MPhil in African Studies from the University of Delhi, along with a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Political Science from Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi. His research lies at the intersection of geopolitics, geoeconomics, and security studies, with a focus on the strategic landscape of the Western Indian Ocean (WIO). He examines India–China engagement in maritime Africa, the geopolitics of resource extraction, traditional and non-traditional security threats, and the evolving regional maritime security architecture.