A Zimbabwean research entity plans to build a towering bronze and stone monument honouring the former Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

Kwame Muzawazi, the founder of the Institute of African Knowledge, which is developing the Liberation City to encompass the Museum of African Liberation, told Russian state-owned media Sputnik that the monument will be one of the centres of the memorial exhibition.

“Africa remembers well that it was the crushing defeat inflicted by the Soviet Union on Hitler’s fascism that inspired the peoples of Africa to national liberation struggles and gave them hope of throwing off the colonial yoke and becoming masters of their own homes again,” he is quoted as saying.

Zimbabwe is one of Russia’s closest allies in Africa and has not condemned the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine and ongoing war. The ties go back to the 1970s when the Soviet Union supported the African nation’s 15-year liberation war against British colonialism.

Various countries, including Russia, Muzawazi said, have pledged financial support for the obelisk which is planned to be made of bronze, stone and mosaic and will be at least 15–20 metres high in the 100-hectare city atop a hill west of Harare, the capital city.

He suggested that the decolonialisation of Africa is incomplete as former colonial masters, including Britain and France, still exercise influence in some of their former colonies.