p Many African countries, especially to the south of the Sahara, consider their top priority to be the building of the light and food industry enterprises for meeting their 185 peopie’s demand for consumer goods and cutting down their hard currency spendings on importing them. Many African countries already have small enterprises of this kind and a relatively developed raw material base, which is a good requisite for organising their national textile, leather and footware, flour and groats, and canning industries.

p Under inter-governmental agreements, the Soviet Union is rendering assistance in building some 40 light and food industry projects in Africa.

p Soviet cooperation in promoting the African food industry includes participation in the construction of dairy, meatpacking, canning and milling enterprises. Three dairies commissioned in Egypt in 1964 were among the first. Another such plant was put into operation in Mogadishu in 1965, and yet another was commissioned in the Sudan in 1968.

p Cattle-breeding is an important branch of African agriculture. Its efficient development in a number of countries is facilitated by the building of processing plants, which ensure a continuous demand for cattle, shorten the distances over which cattle, intended for export, have to be driven, and produce high-quality foodstuffs for domestic consumption and for export. A meat-packing complex in Somalia, and a slaughterhouse and a cold store in Guinea were built with Soviet aid in the early 1970s.

p The rich fish reserves in Africa’s coastal waters offer good opportunities for industrial fishing and canning fish. In 1970, a fish cannery was built, with Soviet assistance at Las Khoren (Somalia); its capacity is 6 million cans a year.

p Fruit and vegetable processing plants put up with Soviet aid in Guinea and the Sudan play an important role in the development of their food industry. The cannery in Mamou is the first industrial enterprise built in a large agricultural area in the centre of Guinea. Its capacity is 6 million cans a year. Big fruit and vegetable processing plants have been constructed in the Sudanese towns of Wan, Kassala and Kerima, which are outlying regions, so the enterprises have a positive effect on the local land cultivation techniques.

p Other food industry projects built in Africa with Soviet assistance include a brandy plant in Algeria. Its 186 construetion began after France, a traditional importer of Algerian wine, stopped imports. The plant was commissioned in 1972 and can process 150,000 hectolitres of wine annually.

Soviet assistance in developing African industry has yielded good results for the economies of the newly free countries and helped them in their struggle for complete equality in international economic relations.