Since the AKP (Party for Justice and Development) political party came to power in 2002, Turkey seems to be paying particular attention to economic cooperation with Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2005, declared by Ankara «year of Africa», Turkey has multiplied its actions and initiatives towards SSA: organization of partnership summits and Turkey-Africa business and investment forums accompanied by increasing integration in African regional organizations. The objective of this article is to comprehend this recent deployment of Turkish economic diplomacy vis-à-vis the Sub-Saharan Africa by stressing the evolution of its economic and trade relations with SSA, the governmental action, the role of private actors, but also the motivations and challenges. Analyzing these aspects has enabled us to observe the particularity of the Turkish economic diplomacy in terms of approach and commitments of private actors in the promotion of the Turkish economic interests in SSA and the complementarity of its role with the official economic diplomacy. As a result, the volume of Turkish-African trade has increased significantly since 2005. In addition, this economic diplomacy has also been put to the service of diplomatic issues on the Continent.

Since the start of 2020, the world has been going through an unprecedented health crisis that has had a significant geoeconomic and geopolitical implications on many emerging and developing countries. Turkey, as an emerging country located at the crossroads of multiple geographic and geopolitical areas is the subject of this paper's study, through an analysis of the different implications of the pandemic on the Turkey’s regional power ambitions, displayed since 2002 following the AKP's accession to power. For more than a decade, Turkey has pursued a proactive foreign policy based on i) asserting its status as a regional economic power; ii) an active political player in the region, with regional and global security interests and responsibilities to match. An analysis of the evolution of its aspects of power in the context of global health crisis shows that the Covid-19 related implications are unlikely to change the Turkish geopolitical landscape. On the contrary, it will rather strengthen the dimensions of its power ambitions given that the global economic and political distortions caused by the Covid-19 could offer, in the medium and long term, some positive externalities.