p The training of national scientific personnel is a difficul problem in the newly free African countries. The period that has passed since they won independence has been too short to enable them to set up major scientific centres and train their own personnel in order to make the most of the fruits of scientific and technical progress. The number and the proportion of scientific personnel in what in general is still a very small contingent of specialists in the young African states are extremely small. In the early 1970s the number of people with academic degrees per 100,000 of the population was 37 in North America, 13 in Europe, three in the Middle East, two in Asia (including Japan) and only 0.2 in Africa.  [263•2 

p In the late 1950s only a small number of African countries had university colleges and research centres. All of them were controlled by the colonial powers and catered to their interests. That was why the 1964 UN Conference in Lagos examined problems of training national personnel, founding African universities and scientific centres and promoting national science, and adopted a plan for scientific research and education in Africa.  [263•3 

p Soviet scientists help young African states to train scientific personnel of the highest qualification primarily through 264 post-graduate training at the institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences and Soviet universities and colleges.

p As of 1 January 1978 more than 700 African citizens had completed post-graduate courses at the Institute of Africa of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Lumumba University, Moscow and Leningrad universities, at teachers training colleges in the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR, and at engineering and technical, agricultural and other Soviet colleges.

p Africans studying in the USSR mastered research methods and became thoroughly acquainted with the works of Soviet scientists. They submitted dissertations dealing with urgent problems confronting many African countries.

p Specialists in the humanities comprise only a small proportion of African scientists who were trained in the USSR. The industrial growth in African countries and the establishment of scientific centres of primary importance for independent economic development have created a need for trained natural scientists.  [264•4  Since 1961 young African scholars have been undergoing qualification apprenticeship at the institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The more gifted of them were admitted to post-graduate courses at Soviet scientific, training and research centres. Between 1961 and 1965 a large group of young Egyptian researchers underwent qualification apprenticeship at the institutes of microbiology, chemical physics, geochemistry and analytical chemistry, biophysics, and animal morphology, at the Main Botanical Gardens and other Soviet scientific institutions.

p Young Africans receive a thorough grounding in natural and social sciences at the Lumumba University. In the period from 1967 to 1977 students from Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Cameroon, Egypt and other countries maintained their dissertations at this higher educational establishment.

p Soviet scientists also help independent African countries to train scientific personnel on the spot. Experienced instructors and researchers who are sent to the continent for this purpose not only lecture at various departments, but also 265 direct seminars and pre-diploma practical work of the students and provide scientific guidance to post-graduates.

p The participation of the USSR in various UN-sponsored international programmes is an important form of assisting young African states in the training of highly qualified practical and scientific workers. At the expense of Soviet contributions to the funds of various UN agencies dealing with extending technical assistance, such as the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), seminars, symposiums and courses for the improvement of qualification and production and technical education of African, Asian and Latin American citizens are regularly organised in the USSR. In most cases their organisation is entrusted to Soviet scientific institutions.

Since 1959, nearly 250 group training projects for holders of UN scholarships have been organised in the USSR. Of the 7,000 people who attended them, more than 2,000 came from 40 African countries. These seminars and symposiums were attended by high-ranking officials of planning and development ministries, general secretaries of some ministries, advisers to heads of state and government, directors of state banks, researchers and industrial and agricultural specialists of independent African countries. They received theoretical grounding and underwent practical training at Soviet industrial and agricultural enterprises, research institutes and scientific centres. They were taken on tours of the USSR in the course of which they had every opportunity to familiarise themselves with’its social, economic, scientific, technical and cultural gains.