Indigenization of human resources and mental emancipation were among the priorities, explicit and implicit, of the African political and intellectual elites striving for meaningful independence. Education, namely training and research that was Afro-centric, was perceived as a means--if not sometimes as an end in itself--to achieve these priorities. Concurrently, in order to facilitate national self-assertion, African leaders advocated a context supporting non-alignment abroad and struggling against neo-colonialism at home.
Limited resources in Africa made it necessary to utilize foreign training facilities in order to attain a reasonably rapid indigenization (Africanization) of human resources. Among those countries intervening with offers of education aid was the USSR, with a variety of formal and nonformal training programs. Innovation was shown both in its curricular and in its admissions procedures. In relationship to African priorities, Lumumba Friendship University and other Soviet training programs--formal and nonformal--may be characterized as participating in the processes of African indigenization, democratization, and conscientization, of which the latter was not welcomed by all African governments in power.
Soviet research on Africa, with the support of Soviet political leadership at the highest level, was on record as having a willingness to place its resources at the disposal of the Third World decolonization movements. A significant increase in the quantity and quality of Soviet research on Africa occurred. A reorganization of African studies created a specialized institute on Africa. Soviet researchers were able to go beyond the secondary sources to which they had been previously restricted by colonial isolation to carry out policy-oriented research aimed, at least partly, at aiding the African decolonization efforts, including studies on the political role of the peasantry, resistance to colonialism, and the unity of African languages.
