ANKARA: Turkiye and Niger agreed to boost cooperation on energy, mining, intelligence and defence, after the West African nation asked Western military personnel to leave and terminated the mining contracts of many Western countries.

Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, along with Defence Minister Yasar Guler, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar and head of the MIT intelligence agency Ibrahim Kalin visited Niger’s capital Niamey on Wednesday.

As well as their ministerial counterparts, the Turkish delegation met with Niger’s leader General Abdourahmane Tiani, who took power in July last year after the military council he leads ousted President Mohamed Bazoum and shifted the country’s allegiances.

The junta kicked out French troops and ordered the US to withdraw its military personnel from the country. It also severed security pacts with the European Union.

The Turkish ministers’ visit to Niamey comes two months after Niger’s Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine met with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara.

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On Wednesday, Turkish and Niger officials discussed improving cooperation in defence intelligence, Fidan told reporters after their talks.

A Turkish defence ministry official said on Thursday that Guler discussed ways to enhance cooperation between Turkiye and Niger in defence and military training.

The two countries signed a declaration of will to support and encourage Turkish companies to improve oil and natural gas fields in Niger, Turkiye’s energy ministry said on Wednesday. Niger has Africa’s highest-grade uranium ores and it is also the world’s seventh-biggest producer of uranium.

But Ankara is not seeking to buy uranium from Niger for its first nuclear power plant being built by Russia’s Rosatom at Akkuyu in Turkiye’s Mediterranean region, a Turkish diplomatic source said.