Trade, Investment And Competition in Africa New Opportunities for Turkish-African Relations

Especially large scaled markets that are generated by Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), East African Community (EAC), Southern African Development Community (SADC), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) make foreign direct investment attractive. Besides, investment in Africa has higher return than the rest of the world due to high commodity prices. Also, Africa50 Fund, which is constituted by African Development Bank, will finance 100 billion dollars projects for infrastructure investment with 10 billion dollars initial capital. AfDB report pointed out that “African countries are well aware of having an array of options, beyond domestic resources and foreign aid, to support their investments.”

Furthermore, a few years back and recently, foreign investors implement their own decisions bravely, whereas they carried on a business in African market depending on their own government’s incentives. For example, according to China’s Ministry of Commerce at the end of 2011 there were 1.586 active investment projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, while there were just 52 active investment projects few years back. Similarly, in 2015 there were 341 Turkish companies in Ethiopia, while there was just one Turkish company in 2005.

Mostly due to its comprehensive Africa expansion, Turkey strengthened its political, economic and cultural relations with Africa which is one of the most important strategic locations expanded Turkish foreign affairs in geopolitical terms. Reciprocally increased number of diplomatic representations, high level visits, developments in transportation, favorable progress in commerce and investment are outstanding points in Turkish - African relations. In upcoming period, Turkey, as a strategic partner of African Union and one of the members of African Development Bank, is targeting to improve and develop its relations established before. The data from Turk Eximbank highlights, up to year 2023, Turkish export targets to reach 500 billion dollars total exports and 50 billion dollars of these exports to Africa.

In this framework, this book discusses certain topics such as income inequality and global value chains, the ways and means of harnessing positive trends for growth and the path to a robust economy in Africa. The book also gives some overall point of views on trade and investment potential, cooperation and collaboration opportunities as well as the competitive outlook of the continent.

Following topics varying between infrastructure and logistics such as construction, banking and finance sectors; energy, mining and textile industries; public health, food and agriculture sectors; trade and investment opportunities; transport and tourism sectors; information and communication technologies are discussed in the scope of the book, which may include chapters written in English or French.

This book, except for one of its chapters (chapter 3), represents the efforts made by the distinctive participants, directly or indirectly, of the 10th International Turkish-African Congress organized by the TASAM African Institute in co-operation with the Senegal Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the West African Monetary and Economic Union (UEMOA), in Dakar, on November 19, 2015. In this occasion we would like to thank all of the participants again for their efforts and valuable contributions to make this event so this book possible. We also apolo gize all of the participants whose paper or presentation or ideas may not be included in this book because of technical difficulties.

From the INTRODUCTION