“St. Petersburg is an attractive tourist destination, a city with over one million citizens. Africa now has, I think, more than 20 such cities. And as we know, all megacities are similar in terms of infrastructure and so on. The peripheries are very different, but the metropolitan areas are quite similar. Megacities compete and cooperate with each other separately from countries as a whole. These are the locomotives between which we need to build cooperation. This is very important because core competencies are concentrated in megacities. That’s where the major institutions and major opportunities are. Therefore, cooperation between the largest cities of Africa and St. Petersburg as the most important centre of Russia has very good prospects.

The Neva international shipbuilding exhibition will be held in September in EXPOFORUM. Egypt and South Africa are participating. Algeria will take part in the Gas Forum. At the Russian Industrialist, there will be a comprehensive Russian-African business dialog. St. Petersburg has a lot of competencies, so in any area of the city’s development there is a great opportunity to explore new export markets,” Voronkov said.

Read full interview here.

The second Russia-Africa summit, economic and humanitarian forum has been held in EXPOFORUM from July 27 to 28. It was attended by official delegations from 48 African countries.