Which is better for African correspondent banking: Turkey or the UAE?

This is obviously a matter of choice. UAE used to have the lead because of its lax laws, but those loopholes are now being closed. UAE has been fighting tooth and nail not to be on any FATF list, but the reality is the banking system has a lot of holes and is very porous to illicit wealth and capital flow. The Central Bank of UAE is taking this very seriously and trying to clamp down. However, this will take some time.

Turkey on the other hand is quite ahead of the UAE when it comes to compliance, a more mature banking environment, and friendly relations with various countries (friend or foe).

In my opinion, Turkey beats out UAE by quite a margin and is the new epicenter for all things correspondent banking for Africa, CIS, Middle East (outside the GCC), and has established itself as the new mature (read: seasoned) jurisdiction to do business with money transfer businesses from all around the world.

I did a video on this, which summarizes the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...