Africa seems to make headlines for all the wrong reasons. People around the world associate the continent with extreme poverty, hunger, drought, civil wars and terrorism.
Generations of politicians, activists and development experts have attempted to figure out how Africa, an immensely rich and dynamic part of the world, could turn things around.
Having strengthened its relations with the continent in recent years, Turkey found the answer: women's empowerment.
This is the key to solving pressing problems in Africa because African women are disproportionately affected by poverty, hunger and conflict. Some 80 percent of women live in rural areas, where child marriages are twice as common as in the cities, and suffer from a lack of access to healthcare, education, and other public services.
Consequently, half of the continent's female population remains illiterate and 62 percent of all deaths from preventable causes during childbirth in the world occur among African women.
According to the United Nations, one in three African women become victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse at some point in their lives. Some 130 million girls and women are known to have been subjected to female circumcision - a practice with no medical or religious justification.
