Vasily R. Filippov

Kirill Dolgov

• Affiliation: Institute for African Studies, RAS
  

Round table was held on May 11, 2018 at the scheduled meeting of “Africa” club under the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. It was organized by joint efforts of Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of International Relations and Socio-Political Sciences of Moscow State Linguistic University and the Faculty of Political Science of Moscow State University. Thirteen reports were heard and 64 people took part in the discussions. During the round table were discussed such topics as growing role of traditions in the process of preventing internal and international clashes on the Black Continent; China’s economic interests in Africa; Belgium’s participation in the DR Congo’s internal policy as the main factor of destabilization; cohesive social systems of Africa as a factor of stabilization and struggle against neocolonialism; interaction between the United States and African countries in the framework of the «Young African leaders initiatives» program. Also during the discussion were discussed such problems as a lack of access to electricity for more than 800 million inhabitants of Africa, living in the South of Sahara, despite the fact that the region is extremely rich in energy resources; political and economic crises in the countries of the Horn of Africa; peculiarities of information policy and the formation of the image of Africa in modern Russian Internet media; the role of France in the political processes in the countries of Central Africa. Also during the round table was a report on the origin of colonialism on the African continent and the historical facts of the emergence of Africa’s dependence on the countries of Western Europe were presented. Particular attention was paid to the complex phenomenon of Fransafric, which is a special system of clientele communications between the Fifth Republic and its former overseas territories. At the end of the roundtable a stormy discussion took place, in which the students of the Russian Peoples’ Friendship University took an active part.