Turkey Developing Trade with Africa
Turkey's strategy of developing ties with African nations is paying off now that Turkish companies are suffering from the recession in Europe and its neighboring countries, GlobalAtlanta learned during a visit to the country that straddles Asian and European continents.
As a guest of Atlanta's Istanbul Center, GlobalAtlanta attended the Turkey World Trade Bridge 2009 conference held in Istanbul, Turkey, June 2-5. More than 3,000 Turkish businesspeople met with some 2,300 representatives of companies from 135 countries.
Turkey's top officials attended including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Caglayan. They were joined by a host of senior officials from 39 countries. Some 55,000 business meetings of the one-on-one type were held during the three days.
The conference was organized by the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (Tuskon), the organization's ninth “bridge” event aimed at developing business around the world. Tuskon was formed in 2005 by seven regional business federations thoughout the country.
Tuskon launched its first foreign trade bridges conference three years ago, focused on African nations. Since then it has held similar events targeting the Asia-Pacific region and Eurasia. When the organization was approached to hold similar conferences with other regions, it decided to host the global trade summit open to everyone.
The irony of the high profile, export-oriented event, which drew large delegations from many African, Central Asian and Central and South American countries, was that Turkey's exports have suffered during the current recession.
Business leaders at the conference said that their traditional European markets had dried up as well as those of neighboring trading partners such as the Ukraine.
Surprisingly, Africa has proved to be the exception, in part because the continent has been less affected by the global financial crisis. However, Gilbert Bukenya, vice president of Uganda, said in his remarks at the conference that the effects of the global recession were beginning to be felt by the Sub-Saharan countries.
Mr. Bukenya praised Turkey for its attention to Africa, and said that Africa should be increasingly dependent on trade as espoused by Turkey rather than on aid.
Exports to African countries increased by 31 percent in the first two months of 2009 compared to 2008. Official figures show Turkey exported $9 billion worth of goods and services in 2008 compared to $2.5 billion in 2005.
The presence of many Africans at the conference ranging from Sudanese wrapped in headdresses, or keffiyehs, to businessmen from the Cameroon dressed in colorful business attire.
Hilal Mohaed Aden, Somalia's ambassador to Turkey, told GlobalAtlanta that Turkey's ties to Africa have resulted in the establishment of 12 African embassies in Istanbul, a three-fold growth since only a few years ago.
Hakan Karabalik, head of the African department of Turkey's undersecretariat of the prime ministry for foreign trade, gave the 60 or so visiting journalists a presentation about his country's strategy to develop ties with Africa.
Turkey began laying the foundation for its African strategy in 2003 following the election of the Justice and Democracy Party led by the current prime minister and long before the global economic crisis hit.
According to Mr. Karabalik, the strategy's objectives stressed increasing trade between Africa and Turkey and increasing Turkish investments in Africa.
The strategy also calls for a growing involvement in Africa by Turkey's small- to medium-sized companies and initiatives by the government to push along economic development.
Behind the lofty goals were more specific “tools” with which to reach them. These included organizing trade, construction and buyers delegations, participating and organizing trade fairs, increasing banking activities and support for accession of African countries to the World Trade Organization.
Other tools were the establishment of regular dialogues with African leaders, opening new commercial offices, providing sound, legal framework agreements with different countries and initiating free trade agreements.
Before Turkey began to focus its commercial interest on Africa, however, intercultural dialogue activities had already been launched by the Gülen movement, a faith-based social movement named after the Turkish intellectual Fethullah Gülen.
Mr. Gülen is an Islamic scholar with a global network of millions of followers. Members of the Gülen movement consider him to be an inspirational leader who encourages a life guided by moderate Islamic principles.
His ideas have played a role in the policy making of the Justice and Democracy Party, which has substantial support from the owners of small- to medium-sized companies.
In keeping with Mr. Gülen's principles, Turkish philanthropists and the government have provided funding for the development of private schools in Africa and elsewhere in the world that follow the curriculum of the specific countries in which they are located.
During a video interview with GlobalAtlanta, Mary M. Nagu, Tanzania's minister of industry, trade and marketing, said Turkish English language schools in her country were highly respected because they provided excellent teachers and followed the local curriculum.
Isaac Omoding, an associate business editor at the New Vision daily newspaper, who attended the conference from Kampala, Uganda, echoed the Tanzanian minister's opinion in relation to his country.
That said, Turkey was quick to establish relations with Libya in 2003, slightly before the country began to emerge from a cloud of suspicion for its past terrorist activities.
The attention proved propitious with the value of Turkey's contracts in Africa rising from $200 million in 2004 to $2.1 billion in 2008.
Americans have lagged behind in their involvement in Libya although C. Mark Selley, a vice president and managing principal of the architectural and engineering firm Leo A. Daly's Houston office, said that he would be visiting Libya as soon as the conference was over.
According to Mr. Karabalik, most of Turkey's contracts are in North Africa with Libya having 351; Algeria, 85; Sudan, 28 and Egypt, 24.
Its trade, however, has grown with countries throughout the continent with exports to Africa climbing from $2.1 billion in 2003 to $9.1 billion in 2008. Its imports from Africa also have grown rising form $3.3 billion in 2003 to $7.8 billion in 2008.
Mr. Karabalik said that Africa's leading exports include a variety of goods including agricultural products, fuels and mined materials, textile clothing, chemicals and iron and steel.
Examples of how Turkish businesses are involved in Africa include setting up large-scale sunflower growing operations in the Sudan and exporting wheat flour throughout the continent.
Turkey's small- to medium-sized companies have distributed a wide variety of products ranging from agricultural goods to basic household items in a $15 million trade link between Turkey and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Central Bank of Turkey also has announced that it would extend $700 million in loans to Turkish exporters, an amount that is to grow to $1.6 billion by the end of the year.
In addition, the Islamic Development Bank, based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is to extend $100 million in loans with one-year terms to Turkish exporters who have been negatively affected by the global financial crisis.
- To learn more about Tuskon, go to www.tuskon.org.tr
- The Web site of Atlanta's Istanbul Center is www.istanbulcenter.org
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