This year, the Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IAfr RAS) celebrates the 60th anniversary. IAfr RAS is the only scientific center in the field of comprehensive African studies in Russia in charge of scientific substantiation of Russia’s strategy in the African direction. Created in 1959, during the collapse of the colonial system, at the time when dozens of newly independent states appeared on the political map of the world, it remains a unique center of social studies to this day, not only carrying out fundamental and applied research, but also coordinating the efforts of individual scientists and individual groups of Africanists in the Russian Federation. The Institute is also an integrating and consolidating center for the work of Africanists in Russia and a number of post-Soviet countries. The article scrutinizes the main lines of research and sets the priorities for the future development of African studies in Russia.

A significant part of the article is dedicated to exposing the role of the Institute in developing and maintaining Russia’s strategic communications with African countries.

Over the 60 years, the Institute has published more than one and a half thousand fundamental scientific research, tens of thousands of articles, held hundreds of international conferences, symposia, round tables, and dozens of scientific expeditions to African countries, as a result of which unique material has been obtained the basis of pioneering scientific developments. 

Together with the Institute of Oriental Studies (RAS), the Institute for African Studies is a co-founder of scientific periodicals - the magazines «Asia and Africa Today» and «East. Afro-Asian communities: history and modernity». IAfr RAS is the founder and publisher of the quarterly «Journal of the Institute for African Studies».