As part of on-going multidimensional foreign policy changes in recent years, there has been since 1998 a revival in Turkey's relations with Africa. Initially rather passive, after 2005 this became a massive effort to develop relations with the whole continent. However, Turkey's Africa policy is unique in Turkish foreign policy, since for the first time it is driven and complemented by the activities of civil society organisations in and about Africa. Conceptualisation of Africa in Turkish society has changed dramatically in less than a decade, and the recent Turkey–Africa Cooperation Summit should be seen as part of this trend. Turkey's opening to Africa is not a short-term inclination, but is likely to develop and deepen in coming years.

In the literature of economic development and civil society, extensive research has been done on the role of western NGOs in fighting poverty; however, there is hardly any study on the role of the NGOs originating from Muslim nations on this issue. There is even a complete silence when it comes to expatriate Muslim NGOs that are functional in the West. This paper aims to fill this gap by studying a Muslim immigrant NGO, Islamische Gemeinschaft Milli Görüş (IGMG), with a focus on its Kurban (meat distribution) projects in more than 70 countries between 2004 and 2009. It argues that a strong transnationalism tendency exists in the expatriate Turkish community living in Germany. The Kurban projects have both the characteristics of this transnational leaning and play an important role in strengthening their own identity in Germany. Through such projects, immigrants not only get first hand information about the situation of Muslims in other countries but also feel part of transnational Islamic community, ummah. Such activities create awareness about poverty among Muslim immigrants and directly contribute to poverty alleviation by aid, investment and projects. From a broader perspective, this study argues that such projects reinforce their identity as immigrants internally/domestically by highlighting the transnational role of Islam and challenges the argument that immigrants are only consumers rather than active contributors to the poverty alleviation.

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For each newly emerging donor in Africa, there are different ways of dealing with the continent, different ways of spending aid and prioritizing the problems. At a political and security level, traditional actors are still the major actors in the continent, while economic and development aid is mostly dominated by the newly emerging non-traditional actors. Turkey as a non-traditional actor has been focusing on development aid and economy, but now it has interested in political affairs and state-building too. This has put Turkey in a middle position between traditional and non-traditional actors in the continent. Since 2011, Turkey is interested to be a more political actor in the continent than being merely an economic power or donor country. This certainly has repercussion for the continent and international actors for possible cooperation and coordination. The main focus of this article will be explaining and contextualizing Turkey’s aid involvement in the continent as the main underlying elements of is interest to be a political power in the last few years.

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