State House, Banjul, 25th July 2023: In an audience with a high-level technical team from the Republic of Türkiye on Tuesday morning, President Barrow expressed his government’s commitment to strengthening higher education? skills development, and cooperation between the two countries.
President Barrow thanked his counterpart, H.E President Erdogan, for the exchanged state visits in 2018 and 2022, which further opened up opportunities in various fields. He called on the Turkish team to consider home-based training programmes to allow more Gambians to be trained.
Türkiye Ambassador to The Gambia, H.E. Tolga Bermek, highlighted the impact of the relationship with The Gambia in various fields, including training 500 members of the GAF personnel and sharing experience on protocol and security matters in preparation for hosting the OIC.
On education, over three hundred Gambian students are studying in Türkiye, and over one hundred and eighty are on Turkish scholarships. The Ambassador also revealed that there are plans to increase the number of beneficiaries of the scholarship in the upcoming semester.
Another area of interest to the technical team is to work with the Ministry of Health on possible partnerships to reduce infant and maternal mortality. Türkiye already gained a drastic reduction in infant and maternal mortality rates since 2007.
Additionally, Marine Science, TVET, ICT and Research are critical areas of possible collaboration.
The delegation of the Technical Committee, headed by Professor Dr Naci GUNDOGAN, was accompanied by H.E the Turkiye Ambassador to The Gambia, Tolga Bermek, consisted of Rectors, Vice Rectors of various Universities and an Adviser to the Turkish President, Ambassador Mustapha Turker ARI. On the Gambian side, Honourable Minister of Higher Education, Professor Pierre Gomez, Vice Chancellor of the UTG, Professor Herbert Robinson, First Secretary of The Gambia Embassy in Turkiye, Ms Ida Sonko and technicians from MOHERST.
