p The training of African national personnel in Soviet educational establishments took on major dimensions from the very first years of Soviet-African cooperation in 255 education. The first large groups of African students Came to the USSR to receive a secondary and higher specialised education as early as 1956. Between the 1960/61 and 1974/75 academic years their numbers increased from 933 to 11,500. In the late 1970s, the Soviet Union has been extending assistance in educating and training national personnel from the overwhelming majority of independent African countries on the basis of inter-government agreements on economic and technical, and also cultural cooperation. The Soviet Government and various organisations grant 3,000 scholarships to African citizens each year.

p Students from African as well as other newly free coun  tries are admitted to leading Soviet institutions of higher education, such as Moscow and Leningrad universities, the Agricultural Academy, and medical institutes in Moscow. They are also enrolled at civil-engineering, geological, power engineering, and many other educational establishments that have rich academic traditions.

p The Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University, set up in Moscow in 1960, offers young people from the developing world broad opportunities for receiving a higher education. It has six basic departments: physics, mathematics and natural sciences; engineering; medical; agricultural; history and philology; and economics. There is also a preparatory faculty and a post-graduate course that turns out highly skilled pedagogical and research personnel for higher educational establishments and research centres. Tuition, medical care and hostel accommodation are free. Moreover, the students receive a monthly grant. The University also covers the travel expenses of first-year students to Moscow and of graduates to their native country. They may spend their summer vacation at a special resort on the Black Sea coast. Special attention is given to the students’ training-in-production practice at various industrial enterprises, pilot projects, research centres, and hospitals throughout the Soviet Union.

p Some 5,600 experts were trained at the University during its first 15 years, including 1,500 for African countries, and their numbers are continuing to grow. More than 450 of its graduates have defended candidate’s theses.

p African citizens studying in the USSR master the specialities needed most by their national economies. Roughly half the African students are trained in the field of industry, 256 transport, communications, and agriculture, while the rest specialise in public health, education, philology, economics, and law.

p “^Account is also taken of some specifics in [training students from Africa, especially future doctors and agriculturists. The curricula of corresponding educational establishments provide for a deeper study of tropical agriculture and medicine, on which] special textbooks have been written. Some institutes have tropical disease departments, while a special faculty of tropical agriculture has been functioning at the Kuban Agricultural Institute since 1970.

p Imperialist and neocolonialist circles are trying to impede the growth of the number of Africans studying in the USSR and to belittle Soviet assistance in this field. They resort to all kinds of anti-Soviet and anti-communist allegations and concoctions. Specifically, to discredit Soviet assistance in training qualified personnel, some Western countries do not recognise Soviet diplomas and diplomas issued by higher educational establishments built with Soviet assistance.

p Now that the African public has seen that experts trained in the Soviet Union and at local educational establishments built with Soviet assistance are not only not inferior to Western-educated staff, but in many respects better qualified, this attitude is being increasingly abandoned in favour of the Soviet system of higher and secondary education.

p Guided by considerations of principle, the socialist countries are taking measures tojensure that all graduates from their educational establishments go back to their native lands to work in various sectors of their national economies. Addressing the meeting on the occasion of the first graduation group from the Lumumba University in 1965, Alexei Kosygin said: "The developing countries need not just trained personnel, but experts with high qualifications. They need experts who are patriots, unswervingly loyal to the cause of the national independence and progress of their countries, people sharing democratic, progressive views and selflessly giving all their knowledge to their homeland.”  [256•7  To train such experts is the main objective of the Soviet 257 assistance rendered to the developing world in this field.

p African graduates from Soviet higher and secondary educational establishments join with the national intellectuals and use the knowledge they receive in the Soviet Union to solve the historic tasks confronting their nations.

p There is another important form in which African national personnel are trained: experts and workers from Africa are invited to Soviet enterprises, projects under construction, design organisations, and other institutions for production and technical training and consultations. Invitations are mainly extended to personnel who, for some reason or other, cannot be trained in a particular country. Many experts from Morocco, Ghana, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Guinea, Mali, the People’s Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Algeria, and some other African countries were thus trained at Soviet power engineering, metallurgical, engineering, petrochemical, and other enterprises (200 in all in more than 60 cities and towns). Of these, some one hundred enterprises train foreigners on a regular basis. These include: the Volgograd and Bratsk hydroelectric stations, the Belaya Kalitva Metallurgical Plant which trains experts for aluminium plants built with Soviet assistance abroad, the Ryazan and Novo-Kuibyshev oil refineries, the internationally known Krasny Proletari and Stankolit engineering plants in Moscow, the Elektrosila Electric Engineering Plant in Leningrad, and many others.

p The production and technical training of experts from developing countries is free, as is medical care. If necessary, foreign experts and workers may use the services of interpreters. Those wishing to do so may attend Russin language classes.

p Since 1968, the Soviet Union has been enrolling students from developing countries for the special purpose of training experts for enterprises built with Soviet technical assistance.

p The Soviet Union also renders assistance to developing countries in training their national personnel in keeping with UN-sponsored programmes. It organises seminars and symposia, train-and-see tours and consultations for those holding UN scholarships. Permanent courses are set up for them at leading Soviet enterprises. This way of raising the qualifications of experts is practised on both an individual and a group basis.

p The numerous references to the work done by young Africans in their home countries after returning from the USSR show that the Soviet Union trains experts who are distinguished, in addition to their broad scientific erudition and high level of theoretical and practical knowledge, by a deepseated patriotism and internationalism, high moral qualities, selflessness, and readiness to give their knowledge for their people’s prosperity.

The ever expanding and consolidated ties between the USSR and the developing countries of Africa in training their national personnel is a vivid illustration of the humanism of Soviet foreign policy and of the solidarity of the Soviet people with the African nations.