MOSCOW, December 11. /TASS/. The Soviet practice of friendly relations with Africa had a good track record and should be resumed, given the new geopolitical reality, said Natalia Tsaizer, chairwoman of the African Business Initiative Union.

She called for increased "soft power" cooperation between Russia and Africa during a discussion at the Valdai International Club, which was dedicated to relations between Russia and the continent.

"The format of friendship of peoples, which, one way or another, existed in the Soviet Union - and in fact, we have a university of the same name - this is probably the main element that needs to be restored, but in a completely different format of the new time, in the new geopolitical paradigm that exists today," she said.

The analyst also noted that these efforts should be carried out in a timely manner, while Russia still has human capital in Africa that goes back to the Soviet period.

"As long as we have this capital, we need this capital to have some proper replacement with people loyal to Russia," she said.

Andrey Maslov, a director at the Center for African Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, agreed with the idea of exerting more "soft power" in Africa but said there was little standing in the way of the Soviet Union pursuing this strategy.

"The Soviet Union acted almost without competition because the West was not ready to provide education to African students on such a scale. The Soviet experience was later copied in China and the West. And now we are operating in a fiercely competitive environment," he said. "It is necessary to train the best and those who will occupy leading positions in their countries.

The analyst said he believes that providing more opportunities to learn the Russian language in Africa, along with boosting demand for Russian studies through additional incentives for talented students, would help in reaching the task.

"It is time to move from quantitative growth in educating African students to qualitative growth, while at the same time not rejecting the quantitative one. It is important for us to come up with a number of measures," he said.