St Petersburg University successfully teaches Russian to citizens of African countries
A full-time Russian language centre will open in the Central African Republic, in the city of Bangui. For four months, 150 students will be trained under the supervision of a lecturer from St Petersburg University. They will have the opportunity to learn about Russian culture by communicating with a native speaker.
Additionally, in September this year, the University will launch a one-year course to prepare future applicants for admission to St Petersburg University. A similar project was already implemented in Tanzania in 2023 with a grant from the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. The programme includes speaking clubs and crash courses for applicants.
There are also plans to open Russian language centres in Mali, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe in 2024.
Dmitry Ptyushkin, Director of the Language Testing Centre at St Petersburg University, focused on the University’s success in popularising the Russian language in South Africa.
For example, 500 students completed the online course in 2023. This was 10 times more than the number of students who took the first course in 2022. Face-to-face classes will also be organised there. It should be noted that St Petersburg University is working in this country together with the Embassy of the Russian Federation in South Africa.
The large-scale activities of the Language Testing Centre at St Petersburg University to open Russian language courses in African countries have resulted in an increase in the number of applicants from Africa wishing to study at St Petersburg University. Thus, more than a quarter of the students who started studying on government-funded places at the Preparatory Courses of the University in the 2023/2024 academic year are citizens of African countries.
For reference: Russian language courses at St Petersburg University are currently being taken by about 1,500 people from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Algeria, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Almost 100 students from 23 countries of the African continent are studying in degree programmes at the University. These are students from Algeria, Egypt, Rwanda, Tunisia, and other African countries. Also, among the students of online courses at St Petersburg University are more than 27,000 people from 50 African countries.