The Presidential Library to present a new electronic exhibition at the Russia-Africa Summit

Archival documents, letters and memories of travelers, drawings and albums with little-known photographs will be presented by the Presidential Library as part of the II Summit and the Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum, which will be held in St. Petersburg on July 27-28, 2023.

The new electronic exhibition project of the Presidential Library "Russian Explorers and Travelers in Africa" will be available at the St. Petersburg’s stand.

The exposition is dedicated to the period of active study of Africa in the 19th-20th centuries. Russian researchers have made numerous scientific discoveries in the field of geography, archeology, ethnography, geology, botany and medicine. Diplomats, doctors, engineers and clerics worked in Africa. The African continent also attracted poets and artists.

Sections of the electronic exhibition are dedicated to outstanding personalities. Among them are the geologist and ethnographer Yegor Kovalevsky, the first European to reach the source of the White Nile; the traveler Wilhelm Juncker, the author of the first map of most of Central Africa; doctor Alexander Eliseev, whose works contain valuable information on geography, ethnography, archeology and medicine; the famous geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, who during an expedition to Ethiopia collected the largest (more than 6,000 samples) collection of durum wheat seeds, thanks to which the best domestic varieties of cereals were bred.

During his long journey to the East, Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich, the future Emperor Nicholas II, visited Africa. This event is showcased in one of the sections of the exhibition.

The electronic exposition is based on the materials from the collection of the Presidential Library Russia-Africa: the History of Relations, available on the institution’s portal. It 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 days of the II Summit and the Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum, a number of cooperation agreements will be signed with partners of the Presidential Library. It is also planned to open a remote access center to the resources of the Presidential Library based on the Russian House in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).

Brief information about the Presidential Library:

The Presidential Library is administered by the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation and is the first electronic national library in Russia.

The library is located in the center of St. Petersburg, in the historic building of the Holy Synod, built in the second quarter of the 19th century according to the project of the outstanding architect Carlo Rossi, and is the largest multifunctional information, scientific, educational and cultural center.

The Presidential Library's collections contain digitally books and periodicals, newsreels, photographs, scientific and educational films, abstracts of dissertations, archival documents and materials on the history of Russian statehood, theory and practice of law, on the Russian language as the state language of the Russian Federation. The volume of the electronic collections is more than a million depository items.