Amid global geopolitical shifts, Russia is strengthening ties with African countries, and education is becoming the foundation of long-term partnership. How is the Russian school of engineering helping African states make the transition from a raw-materials model to technological sovereignty? And why has MISIS University’s century-long experience of integration with industry become for African colleagues not just a benchmark but a ready-to-use working model? This we discussed with Masamba Kah, a public figure, author of the concept “Industrial and Educational Partnership Project with African Countries”, and head of the MISIS African Students’ Union.
— Mr. Kah, considering the current geopolitical landscape, Russia is actively developing cooperation with Africa, including in the field of education. How is the status of Russian engineering education changing in the eyes of African applicants? What stereotypes do they encounter and how do you overcome them?
— Engineering education is the key to Africa’s technological sovereignty. We help the countries of the continent transition from a raw-materials economic model to a manufacturing one by localizing value chains in the mining and agro-industrial sectors. Our task is to train local highly qualified engineers and managers capable of replacing foreign specialists.
As for stereotypes, the best way to debunk them is personal experience. When African students, lecturers, and rectors get acquainted with Russian universities, they see powerful industry integration. They understand that a Russian university is not an ivory tower but part of a single ecosystem uniting science, business, and government regulation. It is precisely this approach that makes it possible to transform postcolonial education systems, adapting them to the real scientific and technological tasks of the economy.
— China and EU countries are actively investing in African campuses and scholarship programs. What is the unique advantage of MISIS University and Russian science as a whole in this race for talent?
— Our main advantage lies in our unique history and continuity. MISIS University grew out of the Mining Academy, founded in 1918. It was a powerful intellectual center that produced the country’s leading industry-specific universities, including our institute (formerly the metallurgy faculty), the Sergo Ordzhonikidze Russian State University for Geological Prospecting, and the Gubkin University (oil and gas). This experience of creating applied engineering schools that have proven their effectiveness over decades is what we offer our African partners today.
Six universities directly created on the basis of the Mining Academy:
- The Mining Institute (later the Moscow Mining Institute, now largely incorporated into MISIS).
- The Institute of Ferrous Metallurgy (later the Moscow Institute of Steel, now the MISIS University of Science and Technology).
- The State University of Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold (part of its resources later became part of other universities).
- The Peat Institute (later Tver State Technical University).
- The Oil Institute (now the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas).
- The Geological Exploration Institute (now the Sergo Ordzhonikidze Russian State Geological Exploration University).
— This clearly shows how the Mining Academy evolved, with its faculties becoming independent institutes, forming their own scientific schools, and growing a network of hundreds of partner companies for which they train personnel and solve applied problems. Today, the MISIS University ecosystem serves as a model for our African colleagues of how to transform a university so that it meets the challenges of industry. This is a transition from purely theoretical education to practice-oriented education, enabling a university to make a real contribution to the economy.
China and India have already appreciated the effectiveness of this approach. They have successfully adapted Soviet educational models, which at one time made it possible to create a powerful agro-industrial complex, energy, transport infrastructure, and a healthcare system. MISIS University is a striking example of such a self-sufficient model; the university has a broad partner network and is part of the consortium of core universities of Rosatom State Corporation in the field of materials science.
— Are there today requests from major Russian corporations for targeted training of students from Africa with subsequent employment? Or is your main task to prevent a brain drain to the West by returning graduates to develop their home countries?
— Our goal is to train African specialists in Russia, immersing them in our educational and industrial standards. This gives Russian business a reliable foundation, i.e. local personnel who speak the same professional language as our companies. Such specialists understand how to adapt Russian technologies to the local market, which aspects need to be modernized, and how to make implementation as effective as possible.
For Russian companies, it is critically important to have a critical core of such professionals in order to work in Africa over the long term. Our approach differs from the strategy of China or Arab countries, which, when introducing technologies, more often rely on their own specialists. We, by contrast, bet on the transfer of competencies. Our graduates are practically indistinguishable from their Russian colleagues in terms of knowledge. They are capable not only of performing current tasks but also of independently developing business, adapting it to the realities of the African continent.
— Mr. Kah, how do you assess the current level of interaction with Russian government agencies on issues of legal protection, migration registration, and employment of Gambian citizens? What systemic problems does the diaspora face today?
As a public figure, I would like to express my personal opinion about the Russian-African community as a whole.
I believe that efforts must be made to develop and support it, above all through the creation of infrastructure: schools, kindergartens, and possibly separate neighborhoods in some cities. This is not about an enclave, but specifically about integrating the Russian-African community into the Russian context.
This community is in many ways a kind of prism through which Africans from Africa look at Russia and assess life in the country as a whole. Similar communities exist in China, Arab countries, Europe, the US. There, great attention is paid to forming a social stratum that becomes a beneficiary of the economy and political system of a given country. In essence, such communities reflect the state’s attitude toward the African continent as a whole.
The Soviet legacy and the foundation that was laid earlier must grow into real instruments for supporting the Russian-African community. On this basis, projects in business, education, and culture can develop. This requires a separate management mechanism and strategic planning for the long term –not for a few years, but for 10, 20, 50 years ahead.
It is important that this community occupy a worthy place within the existing ethnic diversity of Russia. This will make it possible to show that there is a place for Africans here, that they can start families, build businesses, contribute to the development of the Russian economy, and at the same time strengthen ties with the African continent. It seems to me that this is very important.
— If Russia is launching its own mega-grants and world-class campuses, what concrete steps would you recommend to the leadership of MISIS University to create a visa-free and digital hub for African engineers, so that it would be more convenient than studying in Türkiye or the United Arab Emirates?
— The online format depends above all on the programs and the list of target skills and knowledge. It is clear that a mining engineer cannot be trained online, but IT specialists — by all means. We need to look specifically at each industry and the competencies that MISIS University is ready to export to Africa, create a roadmap separately for each of these areas, and see how best to transfer these practices to the African continent.
It seems to me that it is difficult to come up with a general approach. We need to speak specifically about IT, economics, about planning. The tools used, for example, in planning enterprises in the mining and metallurgical complex and the energy complex (as MISIS works with Rosatom) are in extreme demand in African countries. They can exist in the form of models and online tools in order to minimize costs and bring people to some specific practical goal.
Preliminary information through partner universities can quite successfully develop as a network and lead to African partners having the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the essence of how the university has been working with industry for more than 100 years.
— Your project “Industrial and Educational Partnership Project with African Countries”, which you head, sounds like a bridge between the economies of Russia and Africa. Please tell us how the project is going and what concrete goals you have set for the next year or two. Is it training personnel for Russian state corporations operating in Africa, or, conversely, attracting African business to MISIS technological developments? And through what concrete instruments, for example, joint laboratories, faculty exchanges, internships at factories, are you achieving making the partnership not declarative but genuinely active amid the restructuring of global supply chains?
— The very concept of “Industrial and Educational Partnership” was born out of an analysis of what MISIS University represents from the historical standpoint. More than 10 years ago, we began to show not the university’s rankings and its programs, but how the educational process is actually structured around industry. This approach has been very successful among African businessmen, universities, and government agencies. It identifies concrete projects that can be implemented on the African continent, then determines the components (technical, personnel, financial, modeling, project description) and launches it.
When presenting this concept, for example in Ghana, the Jospong Group of Companies, which is represented in 29 African countries, showed an interest to our approach. They were recently at our university, and we are now working closely with African businesses to train personnel for their projects, both at MISIS University and at other Russian universities. The Industrial and Educational Partnership project has already outgrown the walls of the university and is a useful tool for agrarian-industrial universities, for the consortium of core universities of Rosatom State Corporation, and for transport universities through various projects and events where this concept is discussed.
The essence of the concept is to identify project vectors and determine the personnel component for the project, which can be supported by various instruments, both short advanced training courses and bachelor’s, specialist, master’s, and doctoral programs.
The main goal is to build the skills and knowledge needed to implement the project. In essence, adapting the idea of specialist programs, where a graduate takes up a workplace on the African continent without retraining, is, as I have already said, in extreme demand, because a large number of African universities strive to reduce the gap between industry and university education.
And here, universities such as MISIS University, that is, state universities operating within the industry, are useful examples that help reorient programs within universities and give African companies concrete solutions for their personnel and industry tasks.
This will only keep developing. The Russia-Africa Summit is coming up. We will present our concept at this summit. And around this movement there are already several large African companies that are studying this approach in detail and, through this approach, are reaching out to Russian entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector, in waste management, in mining, and in metallurgy precisely for concrete projects. This application is very specific, not a general approach.
Here the university’s international dimension acquires a new function, when it in part performs like a consulting company that handles project support and management from the standpoint of personnel and organizes communication between business structures and government structures of Russia and various African countries.
— Mr. Kah, you are the author of the concept of cultural exchange events between Russia and African countries. What is the uniqueness of this concept? Which formats are key to building long-term ties rather than one-off events?
— Within the university, we have the MISIS African Students’ Union, which was created for academic support of students within the university. The culmination of the events calendar is African Union Day, which takes place in late May–early June every year. There we showcase the culture, music, fashion, culinary innovations, and traditional cuisines of African countries. And we share this with the peoples of Russia so that peoples become closer, because no business will simply exist without cultural exchange. When people understand each other, projects develop better.
And it is precisely through such events that we become closer and more understandable to each other. African Union Day has grown into full-fledged festivals. We bring in various musicians, hold fashion shows and culinary festivals so that people communicate and get to know each other. Our team organized the cultural program of the Russia-Africa Summit in 2023 in St. Petersburg.
I hope that this work will be supported, and that we will be able to scale it not only in Moscow but also in other cities of Russia.
— This spring, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution initiated by Ghana that recognized the transatlantic slave trade as a grave crime against humanity and called for reparations. Western countries and the United States voted against it, while Britain and the EU abstained. The resolution concerns not only money but also the return of cultural property. Your project at MISIS is about the transfer of knowledge and technology and the training of engineering personnel. Can educational partnership with Russia be regarded as a form of reparative justice, that is, as an instrument for closing the very technological gap that Western colonialism created?
— We share technologies. The Russian approach and the history of Russia’s involvement in African countries achieving independence continues. Now it is about economic independence and sovereignty. Therefore, I think the vector has not changed.
This is a complex question requiring approaches that will ultimately lead to the renaissance of the African continent. Both in Western countries and in African countries there are various segments of society that historically participated in this process in some way. Therefore, specialists need to sort out this matter.
As for young people and personnel training, this will undoubtedly lead to the resources of the African continent being managed by local residents and used for the benefit of, above all, local residents. This is precisely the task the university is addressing by sharing technologies and education to the extent permitted by legislation and international legal norms. We are placing our bets on young people, so that they have all the necessary tools to manage their own resources for the benefit of their own peoples. This is our task.
As for assessments and various judgments about what has already been achieved, they should be left to specialists speaking from an expert standpoint. Our task is working with young people – once again I emphasize – so that MISIS University, through its professional navigation program, work with schools, work with colleges, and city-forming enterprises across Russia, is essentially engaged in identifying talent and providing that talent with all the necessary opportunities.
— To conclude our conversation, a traditional question from our journal. What is Russia like to you? What do you like most about it? What has left the deepest impression?
— I was born in Russia; it is my native country. And there is nothing better than home!
— Mr. Kah, we thank you for such an interesting and relevant conversation and wish you success and new interesting projects!
Interview by Yulia NOVITSKAYA
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