Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu on Monday affirmed that the current phase underlined the necessity of holding an important Turkey-Africa Cooperation Summit. In a keynote address at the Summit in Istanbul yesterday, he said the Summit would serve a very critical purpose that is, identifying potentials and partners, in other words, discovering each other. "I certainly believe that at a time of increased commodity and energy prices and scarcity of resources in the face of the new realities and configuration of the global economic order, everybody should look at Africa with more attention and creativity and from a long term perspective, " Ihsanoglu said. "The critical resources that the African continent possesses, notably its natural resources, fertile land, abundance of water in many parts and mineral resources, young population and the strategic location make it potentially the one of the most pertinent places for development projects in agriculture and food security, as well as industrial production. As a matter of fact, in the recent years, the OIC institutions through special programs have been giving emphasis to encouraging the private sector in our member states to deploy efforts to pump more investment in a number of OIC Member States, especially in the African countries," he added. --MORE
