ANKARA
Turkey has been undertaking several projects for development of Africa since the visit of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the continent in 2011.
Turkey's International Development and Cooperation Agency (TIKA), with its 8 offices in Africa, launched 1757 projects in 3 years on education, healthcare, infrastructure, transportation, food, hygiene, agriculture and industry with the cooperation of Turkey's Ministry of Development, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of National Education and many Turkish agencies.
The main project was providing Africans with clean water supply and 1 million Africans now have potable water.
Trade volume between Turkey and Africa reached 17 billion USD in 2011 and the number of embassies Turkey opened in African continent rose to 31 from 12.
Turkey opened several facilities and had been undertaking many infrastructure and training projects in Somalia. Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag and Development Minister Cevdet Yilmaz will visit in Somalia and Sudan on February 23-24 and attend several opening and/or groundbreaking ceremonies.
Meanwhile TIKA has been working on a project on afforestation of the continent. Aiming to fight with desertification and erosion, the first phase of the project is to create a Turkish-Niger friendship forest. An international workshop will also be held in Senegal as part of the project.
Reporting by Meltem Uzun & Enes Kaplan
