p Sport has a great future in Africa, and most African governments pay a great deal of attention to it: they build sports facilities, invite coaches and instructors from 306 foreign countries to train national coaches and athletes.

p An important factor of the development of sports in Africa is the extensive cooperation of Soviet and African athletes. The exchange of sports teams and delegations has become a tradition. Each year after the end of the football season in the USSR, Soviet football teams tour African countries. Back in 1958 Soviet f ootballers played in Ethiopia. The first emissary of Soviet sports in West Africa was the Moscow Dynamo football team which had matches in several countries in 1960.

p In the early 1960s Soviet-African sports ties were only just beginning to take shape, but in the 1970s they had already become extensive and multiform. For example, Soviet footballers had matches with the majority of African teams; in 1977 the Zenith team played in Guinea and Mali, and the Tavria squad in Madagascar and the Seychelles.

p An important role in the development of African sport is played by Soviet assistance in building modern sports facilities. In 1965 a stadium holding 25,000 spectators, a swimming pool, a sports hall and other facilities were built in Conakry with Soviet assistance. A stadium of about the same size was built in Bamako. The USSR also sends sports^equipment to Africa and^some countries received Soviet blueprints of standard sports facilities.

p The managers of Soviet sports organisations and societies are diversifying the forms of Soviet-African cooperation, and Soviet athletes regard it as an important task to help African states to develop sports and physical culture.

p Many African athletes took qualification courses in the USSR. Prior to the elimination competitions for the First African Games the Guinean national basketball team went to the USSR for training where its matches with Soviet basketballers helped it to improve its standard of play. In 1974 a Tunisian 12-men track-and-field group underwent a course of training in the USSR. Athletes from Senegal, Ghana, Guinea, Niger, Kenya and Ethiopia studied at the Moscow Institute of Physical Culture at courses specially organised for them.

p Soviet and African athletes take part in international competitions in African countries and the USSR many of which have become traditional. Soviet cyclists take part in the Tours d’Alger races, and tennis players in international matches in Nigeria. African athletes were frequently 307 invited to participate in international contests in the Soviet Union.

p There are African countries, primarily in the North, with which Soviet sports organisations have long-standing contacts. As regards the states south of the Sahara, contacts with them were established later, but they, too, are now quite extensive. A good example are Soviet-Nigerian ties which are manifested in the joint participation in international competitions (boxing in Leningrad, tennis in Moscow and Lagos, etc.), matches of national boxing and table tennis teams, annual football matches between different teams, and meetings of the managers of sports organisations of the two countries. In 1974 a Nigerian table tennis team took part in an international competition in Vilnius.

p Soviet coaches working in Africa play an important part in promoting Soviet-African cooperation. In the early 1960s there were 34 Soviet coaches working on the African continent, and in the 1970s there were several dozens of them giving instruction in football, volleyball, track-andfield, free-style wrestling, boxing and other sports. Some of them also read lectures and provide methodological assistance in the development of physical culture. Physical education programmes for Soviet secondary schools have been handed over to several African countries. Some of them have awarded orders and medals to Soviet coaches working in Africa.

Requests made by African organisations have always received due attention from Soviet sports organisations. Since the mid-1970s friendship weeks have been held in the course of which various sports contests are organised. Soviet-African cooperation in the sphere of sports is widening. It has a sound base and good prospects for further development to the mutual benefit of both sides.