p The Conference of Ministers of African Member States Responsible for the Application of Science and Technology to Develop ent, sponsored by UNESCO with the cooperation of the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the Organisation of African Unity and held at Dakar (Senegal) in January 1974, showed that research and development was an important iactor of Africa’s revival. The Conference adopted a number of concrete proposals designed to promote further progress in this field and heighten the role of science in stimulating economic development, increasing the national income and, in the final count, achieving economic independence.  [259•1 

p Science on the continent is still in the process of formation and as a rule plays an inadequate role in boosting economic growth in individual countries. Its low level of development is one of the reasons for the backwardness of the overwhelming majority of them. The gap between the developed and the developing countries in the field of science is not diminishing. On the contrary, it is even widening. And Africa badly needs foreign assistance in order to be able to narrow it.

p The Soviet Union’s scientific and technical cooperation with African countries stimulates scientific progress and research on the continent and the establishment of national scientific centres. It enables developing African countries more quickly to attain independence in science, weakens 260 their dependence on developed capitalist states, and creates a basis for accelerating socio-economic transformations.

Of course, the scale of the Soviet Union’s scientific cooperation with African countries is still relatively small, but it will undoubtedly increase considerably when the latter set up new research centres and secure a growth of national research personnel. At the same time there are many unused opportunities in Soviet-African scientific links which could have helped to promote science and scientific research in Africa and fruitful scientific exchange.