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We will continue to enhance our relations with African countries: Erdoğan — Turkey News

DAKAR

Turkey is an impor­tant mem­ber of the G‑20 plat­form and the 13th largest coun­try in the world by pur­chas­ing par­i­ty, Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Feb. 21, under­lin­ing the strength of the Turk­ish econ­o­my despite glob­al difficulties.
“Our econ­o­my is resilient to glob­al shocks. We grew our econ­o­my by five per­cent every year despite the insta­bil­i­ty in the region,” Erdoğan said, speak­ing at a busi­ness forum dur­ing his vis­it to the Sene­galese cap­i­tal Dakar as part of his four-day trip to Cen­tral and West Africa.
Turkey will see a more suc­cess­ful year in growth in 2022 as its growth rates approach dou­ble dig­its, Erdoğan stated.
Sene­gal is an export gate­way to West Africa, Erdoğan said, not­ing coop­er­a­tion in the fields of agri­cul­ture, tourism, food and health will be ben­e­fi­cial for the entire region.
Turkey’s pol­i­cy for “open­ing” to Africa was suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed and turned into a part­ner­ship pol­i­cy with Africa in 2013, he said, empha­siz­ing that ongo­ing projects with African part­ner­ships are based on equal part­ner­ship and mutu­al benefit.
Ankara will con­tin­ue to enhance its rela­tions with African coun­tries based on sin­cer­i­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty, Erdoğan said dur­ing a joint press con­fer­ence with his Sene­galese coun­ter­part, Macky Sall.
The bilat­er­al trade vol­ume between Turkey and Sene­gal reached $540 mil­lion in 2021, the pres­i­dent said, not­ing that Turkey’s aim is to increase this fig­ure to some $1 bil­lion soon.
He added that Turk­ish firms in Sene­gal car­ry out oper­a­tions in the fields of ener­gy, steel pro­duc­tion, health care, food indus­try, ready-mixed con­crete pro­duc­tion and gold processing.
The Turk­ish Coop­er­a­tion and Coor­di­na­tion Agency (TİKA) has final­ized 186 projects in Sene­gal with a total val­ue of $12 mil­lion since 2007, Erdoğan said. The Turk­ish Maarif Foun­da­tion pro­vides edu­ca­tion for 287 stu­dents at 13 schools in the coun­try, he noted.
He thanked Sene­galese author­i­ties for their sup­port in Turkey’s fight against FETÖ. “We have no doubt that this sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty will con­tin­ue,” he said.

Erdo­gan, Diplomacy,