Foreign News: AFRICA: Red Weeds Grow in New Soil

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In Moscow last week grinning Ghanaian diplomats gleefully celebrated the signing of a $45 million contract for Soviet development of their nation's mineral and industrial resources. In the Hotel de France in Guinea's steaming capital of Conakry, the lingua franca of the lobby has shifted from French to Russian. At Leopoldville and Stanleyville in tne Congo, Soviet Ilyushin transports buzz familiarly in and out, debouching badly needed food -plus intelligence officers, tactical advisers for premier Patrice Lumumba's army and, according to Western intelligence reports, arms and ammunition.

FIVE years ago, Russians and Eastern Europeans were varity in black Africa, and, though occasional African nationalists turned up in Moscow to study, not one Pravda Page in so mentioned the continent's name. Last week, everywhere Western diplomats turned. Communist weeds were sprouting in the freshly plowed soil of African nationhood Guinea's Sekou Toure turned to the East for aid after France responded to his demand for independence by withdrawing everything down to the Government House furniture NOW he has Czechs operating his airports, Poles running his public works and East Germans building him a big new radio station. Ethiopia's proud Haile Selassie is well nigh awash with Soviet and Czech financial credits and, inevitably with hundreds of Red technicians.

Despite their slow start in Africa, the Soviets moved swiftly once colonial rule began to crumble. Overnight Russia's rulers created in Moscow a mammoth African research center headed by the Soviet Union's top African expert, Professor Ivan Potekhin. Top Soviet diplomatic talent was rushed to Africa, including Middle East Ace Daniel Solod, who is Moscow's Ambassador to Guinea, and hard-driving Ambassador to Congo Mikhail Yakovlev, whose clever footwork has gained him seemingly unrestricted access to Patrice Lumumba's office. Soviet diplomats have cleared the way for such projects as the African student scheme under which, last week, arrangements were made to send 150 Congolese youths to Moscow's new Friendship University in the autumn. And at least 1,000 African students have already been installed in schools in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and Leningrad under the crash program begun three years ago.

Guerrillas & Acrobats. Following in the master's foot steps. Russia's European satellites are also hard at work infiltrating Africa in a carefully planned joint campaign coordinated by the East Germans. Since 1958, more than 800 African students and labor leaders have "matriculated" at both ordinary universities and special institutes in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Leipzig and East Berlin. Simultaneously, East German trade and cultural missions have been estab- lished in Ghana, Guinea, the Sudan, Nigeria, and in the Mali federation and Cameroon, where Communist parties and Red guerrillas (who had made earlier Moscow pilgrimages) already existed. Within two days after the Congo became independent last June, five East German "trade union" adVisers were setting up shop in Leopoldville.