Italy: Meloni presents migration plan at Africa summit
January 29, 2024
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni kicked off a summit of African leaders in Rome on Monday, outlining a series of pilot projects as part of a development plan to forge a new relationship between Italy and Africa.
The plan, dubbed the Mattei Plan, is named after Italian administrator Enrico Matteo, who championed the growth of North African economies in the 1950s. It is intended to encourage investment on the continent as a way of stemming cross-sea migration. Mediterranean.
Meloni came to power as head of a right-wing government in 2022 and promised to reduce migration during his election campaign.
However, his first year in power saw a huge jump in the number of people arriving on Italian shores, with around 157,600 arriving last year, the highest number since 2016.
Meloni presents plan to restructure Italy-Africa relations
Meloni described a series of pilot projects in individual countries that she said would allow Africa to become a major energy exporter to Europe.
This would help Europe free itself from its dependence on Russian energy following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We want to release African energy to guarantee younger generations a right that has been denied until now,” Meloni said at the summit in an opening speech.
“Here in Europe we talk a lot about the right to emigrate, but we rarely talk about guaranteeing the right not to be forced to emigrate,” she said.
It is pledging an initial sum of 5.5 billion euros ($5.95 billion), including state guarantees to carry out the plans.
“It is cooperation between equals, far from any predatory temptation, but also far from the charitable stance towards Africa that is rarely reconciled with its extraordinary development potential,” Meloni told the leaders.
Warm reception to plan
The plan received an initially lukewarm and cautious reception, with African Union Commission President Moussa Faki Mahamat saying at the summit that African countries would have liked to have been consulted before Italy implemented its plan.
“We need to move from words to actions,” Faki, the former prime minister of Chad, said at the summit. “We cannot be happy with promises that are never fulfilled.”
The presidents of Tunisia, Senegal, Kenya, the Republic of Congo and Somalia were among those present at the summit. In total, 45 African states were represented at various levels.
At the start of the summit, the Italian Green and opposition governments planned a counter-conference in the lower house of the Italian parliament to criticize the Mattei Plan as a neocolonial “empty box” that seeks to re-exploit Africa’s natural resources.
Along with the Mattei Plan, Meloni’s government forged controversial agreements with individual countries to try to mitigate the migratory burden on Italy.
Source: DW
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