The Head of State and the First Lady are expected here this evening for a State visit. By Yaounde diplomatic parlance, President Paul Biya’s visit to Turkey beginning today is a State visit; very much the same diplomatic level in Turkey where visits of such standing are referred to as official visit.

Whatever the case the Head of State and the First Lady will be given first rate treatment during their four-day visit to Turkey beginning this afternoon. The visit, the first by a Cameroonian Head of State, has two very important political and economic underpinnings, none of which actually takes precedence over the other.

On the political front, for example, the visit comes to vindicate the desire of the President of the Republic, as exemplified in the new diplomatic field deployments of June 29, 2009, to break new ground through the making of new friends around the globe. The results of such an ambitious diplomatic outreach came immediately afterwards with the visit of the Turkish President Abdullah Gül in March 24, 2013 to Cameroon. The meeting between the President of the Republic and his Turkish counterpart, as well as other meetings with high-level officials in the Turkish capital will obviously give political cooperation some new tonic.

Cameroon has found in Turkey a new and reliable friend. During President Biya’s stay in Ankara, some ten agreements will come under examination and it is generally believed that many, if not all, of them will be signed in furtherance of the spirit started when Mr Gûl visited Cameroon in March 2010. Of the two agreements signed during that visit, one dealing with the suppression of visas on diplomatic or service passports is already functional as can be attested by the fact that the advance team of Cameroonian officials in Turkey for this visit was not subjected to any visa requirements. There is obviously need to keep the level of political dialogue begun in Yaounde in March 2010 and which has been sustained through regular visits by high ranking officials alive. At the luncheon he hosted for his Turkish counterpart at State House on Tuesday, March , 16, 2010, president Biya made no mystery about his intention to make Turkey an important partner in the strategy to make Cameroon an emerging economy by 2035. In a toast proposed at that luncheon, he said “ Turkey has developed know-how and expertise that can be beneficial to our country in many key areas, notably agriculture, agro-industries, food processing industries, textiles and leather, tourism, infrastructure and low-cost housing…”.

On that occasion, the President of the Republic extended an invitation to Turkey to take advantage of the larger 250 million people of the entire Gulf of Guinea area to open up new markets. Said he: “Cameroon, which is situated in the Gulf of Guinea, at the heart of a market with more than 250 million inhabitants, is an ideal host country for Turkish or Turkish-Cameroonian enterprises wishing to set up businesses near the markets of the sub-region”. Has that call really been heeded to? It is difficult to say for, according to a situation report made available by Cameroon’s Ministry of External relations, as by 2011, direct foreign investments by Turkish businessmen stood at a disappointing tree million US dollars (about FCFA1.5 billion) for some 135 jobs. Trade exchanges are a lot more encouraging, although Cameroon is still to make the best from what the world’s 14th economy which is Turkey, can offer by buying from it. The volume of exchanges today stands at some FCFA 75 billion with the balance of trade largely in Turkey’s favour because Cameroon spends some FCFA 50billion on Turkish goods and services including cement, bakery products, metals and fertilizers. The FCFA25 billion Cameroon gets from Turkey is essentially from its sale of petroleum, timber and aluminium.

President Biya is expected to attend a business forum in Istanbul during this. It is hoped that the forum will provide a good platform for examining the best strategies to improve not only trade relations but to sell Cameroon better so as to attract more Turkish businesses to Cameroon.

The setting is already there with regular weekly flights by Europe’s Number One airline of 2012, Turkish Airlines making regular flights to Cameroon. There is functional Turkish embassy in Yaounde and Cameroon’s embassy in Tel-Aviv, Israel covers Turkey in the hope that in the near future a resident mission with be established in Ankara.