The Italian G7 Presidency kicked off with an Italy-Africa summit in Rome, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government (Fratelli d’Italia/ECR) pledging to make African development a central theme of its mandate through the Mattei Plan.
Twenty-five African heads of state and government came to Rome for the conference, also attended by the heads of the European institutions: European Council President Charles Michel, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
“It is a concrete plan of strategic interventions, focused on a few medium- to long-term priorities, education and training, health and agriculture, water and energy”, explained Meloni, pointing to the sub-Saharan and North African quadrant as the starting point.
Meloni said Italy would set aside an initial €5.5 billion ($5.95 billion) for the Mattei plan, including public guarantees for investment projects and £3 billion from a climate fund set up in 2021 to promote international environmental projects.
One of the pillars of the plan is energy. At the forefront is the National Hydrocarbons Board (Eni), with CEO Claudio Descalzi, who has participated in all the missions that the Italian premier has made to Africa since the beginning of her mandate, during which she has concluded energy cooperation agreements.
Another critical issue for Meloni is immigration, which she hopes to control by making agreements with countries that transit and depart to Italy.
“We must crack down on the traffickers who trade in human beings (…) and in parallel build legal alternatives to these deadly routes. We are ready to offer more opportunities to come to Europe legally so that people can move, learn and bring new skills back home”, von der Leyen said at the summit.
However, there is only one way to stop mass migration: to have prosperity in the economically depressed areas of Africa. This was argued by the President of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki, who, noting the encouraging words of European leaders, called for all promises to be kept and for a real paradigm shift.
“Africa does not want to hold out its hand, we are not beggars. Africa wants to advocate a paradigm shift for a new partnership model, to pave the way for a more just and coherent world and to build peace through friendship and not through barriers”, Faki said.
However, criticism came from the left-wing opposition, which saw the Mattei Plan as an ’empty box’ useful only for the centre-right government’s propaganda purposes ahead of the European elections in June.
“Relaunching relations between Italy and Africa is a huge task, if Meloni wants to get serious she won’t get away with a few slogans”, commented Democratic Party (PD/S&D) deputy chairwoman Lia Quartapelle, vice-chairwoman of the Chamber of Deputies foreign affairs committee.
(Federica Pascale | Euractiv. it with Reuters.com)
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