By Alagie Manneh
The National Assembly Member for Latrikunda Sabiji, Yahya Menteng Sanyang has addressed a chamber of the Federal Assembly of Russia the Duma, as part of ongoing events marking the 2nd International Parliamentary Conference on the theme ‘Russia-Africa in a Multipolar World’.
Delegates from more than 37 African countries are participating in the conference.
The objectives of the conference, according to the organisers, is to “strengthen parliamentary cooperation with African countries in the conditions of formation of a multipolar world, develop relations and common approaches to legal regulations in the economy, science, education and security.
Addressing the conference on how Russia can assist to promote scientific research in African universities, Mr Sanyang said: “Scientific research has now become a vision and mission statement of many African universities but with nothing tangible being committed to advance such ideas primarily due to low financing and low budgetary allocations to universities in Africa. As a strategic partner, we [Africans] trust and believe in Russia. It has never been part of the perennial colonial problem that continues to haunt Africa up till today. Therefore, we are appealing to the Russian Federation to not only provide scholarships for African students to come and study in Russia, but to partner African research universities on research in order to promote our human conditions and the socio-economic development of Africa. Observations of African universities indicated that most have either no evolving scientific research culture, or a weak research culture or no scientific research culture at all. So, African universities will only be useful to Africa’s socio-economic development if they are research-oriented. In that context, Russia should help by way of intellectual support to boost research in our universities.”
