OZGEO geologists presented a paper at the conference "Africa in the Context of Shaping a New System of International Relations

OZGEO Geological Company took part in the X International Conference "Africa in the context of forming a new system of international relations" on "Past, present and future of the African continent (to the 60th anniversary of the Year of Africa). The conference was held on February 28, 2020 in the Peoples Friendship University of Russia (PFUR). The event has been held annually since 2010 and is one of the main issues in the discussion on Africa at the national level.

The conference was attended by more than 120 people, including leading foreign and Russian scientists and African experts, as well as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the Russian Federation - Steve Davis Ugba, Deputy Head of Mission of the Embassy of the Republic of Uganda Rutazindwa Gideon Mwebase, representatives of other countries.

"OZGEO" was presented at the event by Sergey Pichugin, Chief Geologist of the Company, who made a special presentation on "Natural Resources of the Republic of Guinea and Possible Areas for Bilateral Cooperation in the Use of Natural Resources".

OZGEO's report was devoted to the potential of Guinea in the extraction of minerals and valuable deposits. Sergei Pichugin noted that the country's subsoil contains large deposits of iron ores and bauxite, gold and diamonds, limestone, building sands, pebbles, gravel, zircon, rutile and ilmenite. Many bauxite, diamond, gold and other deposits were discovered or explored by Soviet and Russian geologists, including OZGEO geologists.

OZGEO experts also shared with the participants of the conference their vision of prospective areas for cooperation between Russia and Guinea in the field of prospecting, exploration and mining of natural resources. For example, "OZGEO" experts proposed to Guinean colleagues to carry out prospecting work to identify gold occurrences in the Sighira, Banor, Niandan and Fitaba gold-bearing areas, to explore for copper and nickel in the three greenstone belts, where the presence of komatiites has been identified or is suspected. In addition, according to experts, numerous kimberlite pipes have not been exploited to date and it is therefore advisable to organize diamond mining on the pipe clusters in the Banankoro-Makona region.

About the Conference

International scientific conference "Africa in the context of building a new system of international relations" has been held at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the PFUR since 2010. It is organized by the Department of Theory and History of International Relations, together with the Department of African and Arab Studies.

Recently, the Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), the main research center for African studies in Russia, has joined the organization of the conference. In 2020, the organizing committee decided to give the 10th anniversary conference a new international status. As a result of extensive work on the image transformation, the conference received its own English-language website, international name and a reinforced line-up of speakers.

Also, the conference was able to win grants within the framework of the 5-100 program and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and receive financial support.

As a result, leading Africanists, including Timothy Shaw, editor-in-chief of Springer and Palgrave Macmillan journals and others devoted to African studies, the ideologist of Africocentrism as an academic movement, leading expert on African American studies in the USA Molefi Kate Asante, chief Africanist of Ireland Padraig Carmody, and many others agreed to be invited as keynote speakers.

On the Russian side, in addition to the PFUR and the RAS Institute, experts from St. Petersburg State University, Lomonosov Moscow State University, MGIMO, RAS Institute of General History, N.I. Lobachevsky NNSU, DA of the Russian Foreign Ministry, P.G. Demidov Yaroslavl State University also took part.

The 10th RUDN Anniversary Conference on Africa has achieved its goals and actually reached the international level as an authoritative event for Africanists.

About OZGEO

"OZGEO" is a private Russian geological company which specializes in geological prospecting on the territory of the Russian Federation and abroad. Based on the analysis of geological data, interpretation of satellite imagery, employees of the company design and perform field prospecting and exploration work in various countries. Important directions of the company's work are geological, technological and economic expertise of the mining and geological projects as well as geoecological studies.

Prospecting works are carried out using geochemical and geophysical surveying, sinking of mine workings, drilling of wells and modern methods of geological research. The company has developed its own technology of remote sensing (complex remote sensing, CRS) based on specialized processing of multispectral satellite images of the earth's surface with analysis of mining and geological data of the areas and objects under study. The tool allows identifying promising locations for field prospecting and reducing exploration costs.

Over 18 years of its existence, geologists of "OZGEO" have inspected dozens of deposits, ore occurrences and prospective territories of different area, implemented a number of projects in engineering geology and hydrogeology. The main field and expert work was carried out mainly in African countries - Angola, Algeria, Ethiopia, Guinea, Madagascar, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia and Zimbabwe, as well as in Bolivia, Venezuela and Turkey.