The speech was held on 27 July as part of the business programme of the session "Russia and Africa: prospects for the development of inter-university cooperation". Besarion Meskhi shared with the participants of the meeting the experience of cooperation between DSTU and foreign universities in the field of personnel training according to the requirements of the industry.

- The security of any country is determined by its food availability, - the Rector noted. - Modern agriculture is developing rapidly and successfully in many countries, including Russia. The potential for developing cooperation with the African continent in this area is enormous. DSTU is ready to train more than 500 highly qualified engineers by 2030 to solve problems of food security for the real sector of the economy of African countries. To solve this task, we plan to recruit 100 students per year from 2024.

The Rector presented the project developed jointly with African colleagues on the basis of DSTU to create a platform for the targeted training of personnel for African economies: agreements in the field of academic and scientific cooperation will be signed within the framework of the summit. According to him, a working group chaired by Masamba Kaha, an expert in the field of industrial-educational partnerships, has already been set up to launch the project.

In his speech, Besarion Meskhi also noted that for the establishment and effective functioning of branches and representative offices of Russian universities in African countries, it is necessary to make changes in the legislative and regulatory framework at the level of the Russian Federation.

The Russia-Africa Summit will be held for the second time: the first one was held in October 2019 in Sochi, in 2023 representatives of the two countries will meet in St Petersburg. The stated goal of the event is to achieve a qualitatively new level of mutually beneficial partnership between the two countries in the fundamental areas of politics, security, economy, science, technology, culture and humanitarianism.

A Russian-African Economic and Humanitarian Forum will also be held within the framework of the Summit.

The Second Summit and the Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum were organised by the Roscongress Foundation.