Institute for African Studies

The Insti­tute for African Stud­ies (IAS) at the Russ­ian Acad­emy of Sci­ences (RAS) was founded in Octo­ber 1959. Over the past 50 years, the Insti­tute has been con­duct­ing research on his­tor­i­cal, socio-​economic, ethno-​cultural and polit­i­cal prob­lems of all inde­pen­dent African nations that emerged on the con­ti­nent fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the colo­nial sys­tem. This col­lapse had led to the for­ma­tion of a research field for the devel­op­ment of Soviet-​African, and later Russian-​African rela­tions. Since then the schol­ars of the Insti­tute have played a con­sid­er­able part in the devel­op­ment of African stud­ies in Rus­sia. Their names are well-​known the cen­tres of African Stud­ies all around the world.

The IAS embraces 10 research cen­tres. In addi­tion, there are the Depart­ment of Infor­ma­tion and Inter­na­tional Rela­tions, the Doc­toral Stud­ies Depart­ment and the Edit­ing and Pub­lish­ing Department.

The library of the RAS Insti­tute for African Stud­ies is a col­lec­tion of sci­en­tific and ref­er­ence lit­er­a­ture on Africa, the largest in the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion and CIS coun­tries. Its selec­tion num­bers about 120 thou­sand of library items: books, pam­phlets, dis­ser­ta­tions and peri­od­i­cals in Russ­ian and for­eign lan­guages cov­er­ing the prob­lems of Africa and the Arab world.

Prof. Ivan Potekhin was the first Direc­tor of the Insti­tute, his suc­ces­sors being Cor­re­spond­ing Mem­bers of the Russ­ian Acad­emy of Sci­ences Prof. Vasili Solodovnikov and Prof. Ana­toly Gromyko. Since 1992 the Insti­tute has been directed by Cor­re­spond­ing Mem­ber of the Russ­ian Acad­emy of Sci­ences Prof. Alexei Vassiliev.

The Institute’s activ­i­ties are per­formed in top pri­or­ity fields of fun­da­men­tal study pre­scribed by the Acad­emy Pre­sid­ium and listed in the Institute’s Statute.

The IAS is the key insti­tu­tion for the activ­i­ties of the Acad­emy Research Coun­cil for the Prob­lems of Africa under the Depart­ment for Global Prob­lems and Inter­na­tional Rela­tions of Russ­ian Acad­emy of Sciences.

The IAS com­prises 102 research fel­lows; includ­ing a Cor­re­spond­ing Mem­ber of the Russ­ian Acad­emy of Sci­ences, 18 Doc­tors of Sci­ences and 54 PhDs.