Good evening everyone,
thank you for being here at this press conference on the conclusions of the Italia-Africa Summit.

I wish to thank the current Chairperson of the African Union, His Excellency Azali Assoumani, who is here with me at this press conference and has accompanied us throughout this Summit. The Italian Government certainly took a chance when we decided to hold the traditional Italy-Africa conference as a Summit, inviting African Heads of State and Government, after this had always been held at ministerial level but, after today’s event, I want to say, without fear of being contradicted, that that choice paid off. This can be seen by the extremely significant level of participation in this Summit from African leaders. 

As you know, more than 46 African countries, 13 Heads of State, 9 Heads of Government, 5 Vice Presidents, 9 Ministers and 2 Deputy Ministers plus 25 international organisations were present at this Summit.

In essence, the Italian approach is looked upon with great interest by the African continent, as was shown by the level of attendance today. This is obviously something I am proud of, as indeed I am proud of the fact that, after today’s Summit, many invitees complemented the Italian Government for the organisation, for the content, and for this initiative, which everyone defined a success.

Bilateral meetings have been held today, and will continue above all tomorrow, with many Heads of State and Government present at this Summit, allowing us to further discuss our relations in-depth.

I wish to thank President of the Republic Mattarella, who opened the Italia-Africa Summit yesterday with a wonderful dinner at the Quirinale Palace, during which he underlined the strategic importance of Europe’s relationship with Africa and the role Italy can play from this point of view.

The purpose of today’s Summit was for Italy to present our new philosophy of cooperation with African countries; a new cooperation model that shuns any predatory temptations or paternalistic approaches, not to mention a certain idea that relations with Africa should above all have a ‘charity-like’ dimension that does not take into account the continent’s great opportunities and great potential.

So, we have presented Italy’s idea of equal cooperation, that must have mutual benefits for all; cooperation above all on strategic issues in order to support the growth of the nations involved, and to do so over the long term.

We have done this by presenting the cornerstones of what we call our ‘Mattei Plan’, with a number of specific and concrete projects that we already spoke about this morning.

We did this because we didn’t want to present just a philosophy; one of the things we have often heard our African partners say is precisely that great ideas are always presented but then those ideas struggle to turn into concrete facts.

Today, we wanted to start from concrete facts, explaining that the Mattei Plan has five action areas, covering a number of issues we consider to be strategic: education and training; health; water; agriculture; energy. There is then the matter of infrastructure, which applies to all these priorities, without which it is very difficult to achieve the rest.

We therefore structured the working sessions of this conference according to these five priorities, these five areas for action, and I must say that a lot of interesting input came from these conference working sessions, which we intend to use in the next stages.

However, I would like to quickly go back to the projects we already talked about this morning, involving nine African nations to begin with.

With regard to Kenya, the pillars are energy and agriculture. Our goal is to work on the development of the biofuels supply chain with a project in which we are aiming to involve 400,000 farmers by 2027.

In Tunisia, where the pillars are agriculture, water and education and training, we are working to upgrade purification stations for non-conventional water in order to irrigate an area of 8,000 hectares, and to create an agri-food training centre.

For Congo, the pillars are water, energy and infrastructure. Our aim is to build wells and water distribution networks for agricultural purposes, powered above all by renewable energy.

In Côte d’Ivoire, where the pillars are health and education and training, we are aiming to improve accessibility to and the quality of primary services, also through training programmes for healthcare workers, medical staff exchanges and telemedicine, as well as to enhance education.

Then there is Morocco, where the pillars are education and training and energy. Our goal is to build a large centre of excellence for vocational training linked to the production of renewable energy.

In Mozambique, the pillars are agriculture and infrastructure. We are working to build an agri-food centre to promote the excellence of local products and their exports. 

Ethiopia’s pillars are agriculture, water, and education and training. Our goal here is to carry out environmental rehabilitation work in a number of areas and implement water purification measures, also by providing support for training.

In Egypt, the pillars are agriculture and education and training. In an area 200km from Alexandria, we are working to support the production of cereals, investing in machinery, new cultivation methods and vocational training.

In addition to these, there is the work in Algeria, where we would like to experiment with satellite monitoring for agriculture.

As part of this partnership idea of ours, we clearly aim to use the best technology Italy has to offer, covering all measures across the board, including forms of technology transfer. Connection infrastructure is also of crucial importance upstream, with particular regard to energy. As you know, Italy’s goal is to become an energy supply hub for Europe, also through energy that can be produced by African countries (in excess of their needs); in order for that energy to be transported and exported to Europe, connection infrastructure is needed. There are several examples of such infrastructure, such as the Elmed electrical interconnection cable we are working on, and the H2 South Corridor. So, there are several infrastructure projects we are working on, also with the support of the European Union.

As I was saying, these are some of the countries to be involved initially but our goal is to replicate the most successful models in all countries that are interested, as well as to envisage other projects with the contribution of African nations too, because this is a new aspect of the method that we wanted to use at this Summit. We did not come here with a defined, completed project to present to others. We have presented an idea and tried to illustrate it through concrete projects; we have asked these nations what they think and are collecting their suggestions, their advice and their points of view in order to define this work. Over the coming weeks, following the Summit and having gathered these insights, after tomorrow’s bilateral meetings, and so after this extensive work to exchange and share input, we will of course be calling a meeting of the steering committee, on the one hand to complete the final drafting and, on the other, to begin launching the first operational teams and to ensure that concrete steps can be taken immediately, because we have heard many talk about concreteness today, about showing that when you make a commitment you are also able to deliver on it.

I believe this key element can make the difference in the relationship between Africa and not just Italy but Europe, because there were also many ambassadors here today, including ambassadors from G7 countries. What Italy is trying to do is also a pioneering approach with regard to the work that we believe Europe can and must do, and my thanks of course go to the leaders of the European institutions who were among our guests here today.

In conclusion, it appears to me that this new approach has been welcomed very positively. I have seen and listened to many speeches thanking Italy for understanding a number of important things that African countries also feel in their relationship with us.

The fact of sharing ideas and having an immediately concrete approach has certainly made the difference. I was struck by a number of things I heard during the speeches. I am referring to the need to move beyond an approach with Africa that is based on the classic ‘donor country-beneficiary country’ model, to the need to say “we are partners; there is not a donor and a beneficiary. There are nations that work together in order to grow together and have mutual benefits”. This approach is very different from what we have often seen. Others asked to move beyond the approach that has often guided views on Africa, whereby Western nations consider themselves to be a kind of driving force for African nations to latch onto, as if they somehow had to follow. This is also not appreciated. I agree on the fact that it is above all about respect and the ability to believe in others, considering them above all partners and so, as we were saying, a relationship between equals.

This the work we have done with this conference, and I am extremely satisfied that it has been a success; I am satisfied that Italy’s approach and point of view, and how innovative it can be, have been understood.

This work clearly does not stop here: today’s conference is just one concrete example of this Italian foreign policy work and this will obviously continue throughout this year of our G7 Presidency because, as you know, we intend to focus on Africa among the main issues that will be discussed at G7 level.

So, thank you, thank you all, and thank you, Mr Chairperson, for your presence at this press conference.

[Courtesy translation]