Speaking at the ceremony, the vice chancellor of the University of The Gambia, Professor Muhammadou MO Kah said Turkish-Gambia relationship goes beyond paper signature because the former has become a destination for higher education.
“I am particularly concerned that Adnan Menderes University has a faculty of medicine, agriculture and engineering which are the three main faculties that are critical to the continuing development and future of this country and majority of the students are interested in it,” he said. “We can assure you our commitment, this is the only university in the country and it’s about 16 years old and the hope of our country.”
Professor Kah added: “We have sworn in about 24 medical graduates recently which now comes to a total of 130 medical graduates here and we are increasingly looking for a destination where this young talented Gambian doctors whom we will entrust the healthcare infrastructure of this country can come to a university like yours and do their specialty or spend six months or a year and do a fellowship. So we are very interested in your medical school and we will be more than ready to welcome in advance, PhD student to come and spend time here to do their field research. We are also ready to welcome your faculty to come and teach here as an exchange students and we guarantee them of housing and logistical support because we are in need of lecturers especially in the sciences.”
He also stated that the UTG has signed an agreement with the Islamic Development Bank on reverse linkages programme and the have chosen turkey as a partnere country for the programme. “With this reverse linkages programme, the Islamic Development Bank will put her resources into this support and a partner university in turkey will be the partnering institution to support the programme and we have chosen the field of medicine.”
Mesut Ermazor, a biologist from Adnan Menderes University while given an overview of the institution said it was established in 1992 with over 37,000 students been enrolled with over 200 universities both in the private and government sector.
“The Adnan Menderes University has 12 faculties which include the school of agriculture, medicine, engineering, arts and sciences, economics, tourism, communication and others. We have enrolled 70 international students from African countries with only one Gambian student currently enrolled.”
He said there are more than 500 groups in the university such as the biology group, theatre, dancing as well as other groups.
Mesut who is the head of the Medicine Faculty said his faculty has been one of the largest with 50,000 patients monthly, 30 beds for new born and 20 operating rooms in order to deliver quality medical services to their patients.
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