200 Turkish students begin visit to 18 African nations

By Zuhal Demirci and Ercan Canpolat

ANKARA

Turkish students began their trip to 18 African countries on Saturday as part of a special program organized by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) in cooperation with Turkish Airlines, Anadolu Agency and Turkish Radio and Television (TRT).

The 2017 Africa Experience Sharing Program will give an opportunity to 200 students to visit several African countries, including Tunisia, Libya, Somalia, Kenya, Algeria, Chad, Sudan, Ghana and Niger between Aug. 5 and Aug. 30.

The students will also visit the Arab countries Lebanon and Jordan as part of their program.

Nine nongovernmental organizations are also involved in the project.

They will participate in social, cultural and humanitarian activities for the renovation of schools, orphanages, libraries and places of worship as predetermined by TIKA and local NGOs in the visiting countries. They will also be involved in implementation of local developmental projects.

Yunus Simsek, a graduate student at Fırat University’s Department of Political Science and Public Administration, said: "As the first team on the program, we will firstly visit Jordan, one of the most important countries of the Middle East, and we will visit Palestinian refugees who have left their countries because of wars in 1948 and 1967."

They will visit a camp between Amman and Zerkaa, where around 95,000 refugees live.

"We will closely observe the problems experienced by the refugees," Simsek said.

Muhammed Bayram, a medical student at Trakya University, said he was looking forward to the program. "With the Africa Experience Sharing Program, we will have on-site aid activities to make better and more livable places," Bayram added.