Turkey’s Africa Project Bears Fruit

The African market, which was stirred with State Minister Kursad Tuzmen’s efforts, has grown by 1 billion dollars between 2002 and 2003. While Turkey imports energy and raw materials from financially troubled African countries, Turkish businessmen have begun to make investments there. Ankara tried to establish Free Trade Agreements (STA) with African countries in order to establish a balance between exports and imports. Turkey signed the first STA in North Africa with Morocco in April. It also plans to sign STA’s with northern African countries like Egypt and Algeria.

The Africa project, which has become a part of Turkey’s state policy, has caused commercial relations with the continent to increase by 5 billion dollars. Mixed Economic Commission meetings have been conducted with Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Cameroon– countries set by the Turkey as the target market. Turkey’s trade volume with that continent, which was 1.7 billion dollars in 1994, reached 5.3 billion dollars by the end of 2003. Turkey’s target for this year is 6 billion dollars.

According to a report prepared by Ambassador Can Altan, trade with African countries in 2001 increased to 4.3 billion dollars, but this amount was reduced to 4.3 billion dollars in 2002. Then, mutual trade reached 5.3 billion dollars in 2003. Turkey’s biggest commercial partner has been Algeria with trade of 1.6 billion dollars. Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco follow Algeria respectively. Relations are also improving fast with countries in southern Africa like South Africa and Nigeria.