Presidential Library to Present New Electronic Exhibition at Russia–Africa Forum
Archival documents, letters and memoirs of travellers, as well as drawings and albums with little-known photographs will be presented by the Presidential Library as part of the Second Russia–Africa Summit and Economic and Humanitarian Forum to be held in St. Petersburg on 27 and 28 July 2023.
The new electronic exhibition project of the Presidential Library entitled ‘Russian explorers and travellers in Africa’ will be available at the stand of St. Petersburg.
The exhibition is dedicated to the active exploration of Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. Russian explorers made numerous scientific discoveries in geography, archaeology, ethnography, geology, botany, and medicine. Diplomats, doctors, engineers, and clergymen worked in Africa. The African continent also attracted poets and artists.
Sections of the electronic exhibition are dedicated to outstanding personalities. Among them are geologist and ethnographer Yegor Kovalevsky, the first European to reach the source of the White Nile; traveller Wilhelm Junker, the author of the first map of most of Central Africa; physician Alexander Eliseev, whose works contain valuable information on geography, ethnography, archaeology and medicine; and the famous geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, who during his expedition to Ethiopia collected the largest (more than 6,000 samples) collection of durum wheat seeds, which led to the development of the best domestic varieties of cereals.
Tsesarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, the future Emperor Nicholas II, visited Africa during his great journey to the East. One of the sections of the exhibition is dedicated to this event.
The electronic exhibition is based on the materials of the Presidential Library’s collection ‘Russia–Africa: the History of Relations’, which is available on the Library’s website. The selection includes digital copies of studies, archival documents, visual and cartographic materials reflecting various stages of relations between Russia and African countries in the 19th–20th centuries.
During the Second Russia–Africa Summit and Economic and Humanitarian Forum, a number of cooperation agreements will be signed with the Presidential Library’s partners. It is also planned to open a centre of remote access to the Presidential Library’s resources at the Russian House in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).
Brief information about the Presidential Library:
The Presidential Library is administered by the Executive Office of the President of the Russian Federation and is the first electronic national library in Russia.
The library is located in the centre of St. Petersburg, in the historic building of the Holy Synod, built in the second quarter of the 19th century by the outstanding architect Carlo Rossi. It is the largest multifunctional information, scientific, educational, cultural and outreach centre.
The Presidential Library’s digital collection presents books and periodicals, newsreels, photographs, scientific and educational films, dissertation abstracts, archival documents and materials on the history of Russian statehood, theory and practice of law, and Russian as the state language of the Russian Federation. The Library’s electronic collection has more than one million storage units.
The Roscongress Foundation is the organizer of the Second Russia–Africa Summit and Economic and Humanitarian Forum.
Official website: summitafrica.ru