SESRIC has participated in the Turkish-African CSOs Forum “Cooperation and Development” that took place in Istanbul from 14 to 16 August 2008. The Forum was organized by the African Institute of Turkish Asian Centre for Strategic Studies (TASAM), an Istanbul based think tank organisation dedicated to African studies. Around 200 members of CSOs from the Republic of Turkey and African continent and 25 regional and international organisations participated in the Forum. Mr. Mehmet Fatih Serenli, Senior Researcher at the Centre, represented the SESRIC thereat.

The objective of the Forum was to specify the cooperation fields between the leading Turkish and African organizations and to develop a joint vision, to share knowledge and experience by forming a broad scale cooperation platform among the CSOs, to identify projects that contribute in the development of bilateral and multilateral relations, to provide necessary finance for implementation of joint projects, and to explore the possibilities of organizing joint activities in various fields.

In the first day several experts from international organisations and members of the CSOs made key speeches in the sessions organised under the following titles: Economy and Development in the Axis of Civil Society; Sectoral Cooperation Possibilities: Education, Health and Environment; Cooperation Possibilities and Civil Society Dialogue; Position of Africa in International Conjuncture and the Role of CSOs. During the workshops held in the second day of the Forum, the participants involved in the discussion and exchanged their views on the main themes. A final communiqué has been declared at the end of the Forum.

Please, visit http://www.tasam.org/index.php?altid=2507 for more information.