At the opening of the Italy/Africa summit, hosted by the Italian Senate in Rome on Monday 29 January, on the theme of ‘A bridge for common growth’, the EU emphasised the complementarity between Italy’s ‘Mattei plan’ outlined during this occasion, and the EU’s €150 billion investment offer to Africa under the Global Gateway strategic investment plan.
As President of the G7 in 2024, Italy intends to make Africa a priority and seek to build on its relationship with this continent of 1.4 billion people, endowed with considerable natural resources and the youngest continent in the world.
Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, stressed this enormous potential at the start of the summit, which brought together some twenty countries and the leaders of the African Union and the EU.
“Africa is far from being a poor continent. It has 30% of the world’s mineral resources, 60% of arable land and 60% of its population is under 25. The whole world cannot think about the future without taking Africa into account. Our future inevitably depends on that of the African continent”, said Ms Meloni, adding: “We have therefore decided to launch an ambitious programme of interventions to help the continent grow and prosper from its immense resources. All this forms the backbone of the Italian strategic project that we call the Mattei Plan for Africa”.
This is a medium and long-term plan focusing on energy, education, training, health, agriculture and water.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, thanked Italy for placing cooperation with Africa at the heart of its foreign policy and its presidency of the G7.
“The new Mattei Plan comes as an important contribution to this new phase of our collaboration, and it comes complementary to our European Global Gateway with its €150 billion investment plan for Africa”, she said.
She pointed out that the EU was already at work “to train skills for manufacturing vaccines (mRNA vaccines: editor’s note) in Rwanda, Ghana and Senegal”, just as it is training the workforce in Kenya and Namibia to produce clean hydrogen; “this is an example of complementarity with the Mattei plan”, added Ms von der Leyen.
Taking another example, she cited the coordination by the University of Parma of an Erasmus project aimed at developing clean energy skills in Africa, adding that “we want to invest in this type of cooperation”.
On the subject of immigration, Ms von der Leyen stressed the importance of “joining forces” to combat smuggling networks, and of cooperating closely with the countries of origin of irregular migrants to facilitate returns, while at the same time being “ready to offer more opportunities to come to Europe legally”.
Along the same lines, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, recalled that the sixth EU/Africa summit in February 2022 had laid the foundations for a strengthened strategic partnership for shared prosperity (see EUROPE 12893/3, 12894/1).
This partnership is “one of equals”, insisted the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola.
For the Chair of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki, it must be “mutually beneficial and respectful”. Mr Faki thanked Ms Meloni and Italy for having “shown a constant interest in fair and productive cooperation and a position in favour of a shift in paradigm”. Hence his hope that Italy’s presidency of the G7 will amplify “the need for an innovative strategy and a Marshall Plan for Africa”.
He pointed out that the African Union’s Agenda 2063 was the “AU’s strategic frame of reference”, and that agriculture, infrastructure, energy, health, education and digitalisation were the top priorities of the EU/Africa partnership. “We would have wished to have been consulted beforehand, (but) Africa is ready to discuss the contours and modalities of implementation of the Mattei plan”, he said. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)