Here are the pillars of Meloni’s plan for Africa according to Meloni
The full text of Giorgia Meloni's speech at the Italy-Africa Summit
Ladies Presidents, Ladies Prime Ministers, Authorities, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great honor for me to welcome you today in Rome, in the Chamber of the Senate of the Republic, and I want to thank President La Russa, the Presidential Council and the Conference of Group Leaders for having accepted the Government's request, allowing this important event to take place carried out here.
Because this Chamber is one of the most significant places in our history. The Senate, together with the Chamber of Deputies, is the pillar of Italian democracy and choosing to celebrate this Summit here underlines the importance we attribute to today's work.
Just as it is the first time that the Italy-Africa Conference, which in the past has always been held at ministerial level, has been elevated to a Summit and sees the participation of the Heads of State and Government. This too is a choice that reiterates the centrality and relevance that Italy attributes to the relationship with African nations.
Allow me to thank the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who in his speech yesterday at the Quirinale Palace reiterated how strategic dialogue and cooperation between Italy and Africa are. I also thank and greet the leaders of the European institutions who accepted our invitation and are here today. Your presence, Ursula, Charles, Roberta, is a very important signal, because it confirms Europe's support for our commitment.
Allow me to address a special greeting to the African Union, represented by the President in office, Azali Assoumani, and by the President of the Commission Moussa Faki, which this year joined the G20 and is an option that Italy has been among the very first Nations to promote.
Finally, I would like to thank the United Nations – represented by the Deputy Secretary General, the leaders of international organizations, financial institutions and multilateral development banks present.
This Summit is the first international event that Italy has hosted since it assumed the Presidency of the G7. And it is the result of an extremely precise foreign policy choice, which will lead to reserving Africa a place of honor in the agenda of our Presidency of the Group of Seven.
We made this choice because the medium and long-term objective we have set ourselves is to demonstrate that we are aware of how interconnected the destiny of our two continents, Europe and Africa, is. And we think it is possible to imagine and write a new page in the history of our relationships. Cooperation as equals, far from any predatory temptation, but also from that "charitable" approach to Africa which is difficult to reconcile with its extraordinary development potential.
This new approach, which our nation wants to champion, is also reflected in the title of this Summit: "Italy-Africa, a bridge to grow together". Because it is Italy's natural vocation: a bridge between Africa and Europe. A bridge that we Italians have the advantage of being able to build not starting from scratch, but from the solid foundations that, long ago, a great Italian like Enrico Mattei, founder of ENI, had the foresight to imagine.
Mattei loved to say that "ingenuity is seeing possibilities where others see none". Where others saw difficulties, Mattei saw an opportunity. And it taught us that it was possible to combine the Italian need to make its growth sustainable with that of the partner nations to experience a season of freedom, development and progress. Today we want to start again from that intuition and write a new page of this story together.
First of all, it is necessary to dismantle some distorted narratives, such as that which claims that Africa is a poor continent. Because that's not the case. Africa is by no means a poor continent: it holds 30% of the world's mineral resources; holds 60% of the arable land. 60% of its population is under the age of 25, it is the youngest continent in the world, and this also makes it a land with enormous human capital potential. But it is also an immense continent, which contains within it a thousand peculiarities and therefore also very different needs.
Italy, Europe, I dare say the whole world, cannot think about the future without taking Africa into due consideration. Our future inevitably also depends on the future of the African continent.
Aware of this, we want to do our part and have therefore decided to launch an ambitious program of interventions that is capable of helping the continent grow and prosper starting from its immense resources.
THE PRIORITIES OF THE MATTEI PLAN
All this is the backbone of the Italian strategic project that we call the Mattei Plan for Africa. A concrete plan of strategic interventions, concentrated on a few, fundamental, medium and long-term priorities, because we must also say enough to the logic of resources spent on myriads of micro interventions that do not produce significant results.
We have chosen five major priorities for intervention: education and training; Health; agriculture; water and energy. To begin with, we have identified some African nations, divided into the sub-Saharan and North African quadrant, with the aim of progressively extending this initiative following an incremental logic.
But it is not a Plan conceived as a closed box, to be imposed and imposed from above, as, we must say, has sometimes been done in the past, because the method must also be new. Thus the Plan is conceived as a programmatic platform open to sharing and collaboration with African Nations, both in the definition and implementation phases of individual projects.
Sharing is one of the key principles of the Mattei Plan and, in this framework, the work of this Summit will be crucial to enriching the path. For this reason we wanted to structure the program of this day's work on five thematic sessions, which follow the main directions of this initiative of ours.
PILOT PROJECTS: ENERGY, EDUCATION, HEALTH, AGRICULTURE, WATER
What are the pilot projects we are working on? I will limit myself to mentioning a few, divided into the various areas of intervention, because it would be impossible to describe them one by one.
I start from the education and professional training pillar, which is decisive because any investment, to bring wealth, needs to generate work, and that work requires adequate education and adequate training. To build bridges, railways, photovoltaic systems, roads, schools, hospitals, skills are needed and training is needed for the purposes of that skill. I am thinking, for example, of Morocco , where we aim to create a large center of excellence for professional training on the topic of renewable energy.
But we also plan to strengthen the ties between the Italian school system and those of African nations. I am thinking of the infrastructural redevelopment of schools, as we will already do in 2024 in Tunisia, of the training and updating of teachers and the exchanges of students and teachers between our nations.
The Mattei Plan will then dedicate a specific chapter to health. Here the first nation we want to address is Ivory Coast, where our objective is to improve the accessibility and quality of primary services, with particular attention to the little ones, their mothers and the most fragile people.
Another sector of intervention will be agriculture because if it is true that Africa holds 60% of arable land, and that that land is often unfortunately unused, we must ensure that technology contributes to making it arable so that it can bear fruit . And I say more. We are not only committed to "food security", but also to "food safety". That is, the challenge we want to achieve is not only guaranteeing food for all, but guaranteeing quality food for all. And the role of research is fundamental in this, but as I have already said, I don't believe that that research should be used to produce food in the laboratory and perhaps move towards a world in which those who are rich will be able to eat natural food and those who are poor will will only be able to allow synthetic ones, with health effects that we cannot predict.
This is not the world we want to build.
The world we want is a world in which the age-old bond between man and land is maintained and research helps to optimize that bond, guaranteeing increasingly resistant cultures, increasingly modern cultivation techniques, and capable of improving the quality and quantity of productions
Just as we must seize the opportunities that technologies offer us, in terms of earth observation and data collection to provide as much useful information as possible on the trend of deforestation, on water waste, on the health of crops. In this regard, for example, we intend to launch a satellite monitoring project on agriculture in Algeria, while in Mozambique we are committed to building an agri-food center that enhances the excellence and exports of local products.
Again in Egypt we plan to support, in an area 200 km from Alexandria, the production of wheat, soya, corn and sunflower with investments in machinery, seeds, technologies and new cultivation methods, as well as obviously accompanying professional training.
But I am also thinking of the project already started in Tunisia, where we are working to strengthen the non-conventional water purification stations to irrigate an area of eight thousand hectares and create a training center dedicated to the agri-food sector.
Because we also want to offer our contribution to improve the management and access to water, an increasingly scarce resource whose lack is one of the main factors of food insecurity, conflicts and migration. On this front I will briefly mention two other pilot projects: the first in the Republic of Congo, where we intend to commit to the construction of wells and water distribution networks especially for agricultural purposes, powered exclusively by renewable energy; the second in Ethiopia, where we want to start the environmental recovery of some areas and carry out water restoration interventions, also through training and technical support to local universities.
And we come to the last pillar, certainly not least in importance of the Mattei Plan, namely the one dedicated to the climate-energy connection and related infrastructures.
We have always been convinced that Italy has all it takes to become the natural energy supply hub for the whole of Europe. It is a goal that we can achieve if we use energy as the key to development for everyone.
The interest that Italy pursues is to help African nations interested in producing sufficient energy for their needs and exporting the excess part to Europe, bringing together two needs. The African one is to develop this production and generate wealth, and the European one is to secure new energy supply routes.
Among the initiatives in this area I would like to mention the one in Kenya dedicated to the development of the biofuels supply chain, which aims to involve up to approximately 400 thousand farmers by 2027.
But clearly this exchange works if there are also connection infrastructures between the two continents and we have been working on this for some time, especially together with the European Union, I am thinking of the ELMED electrical interconnection between Italy and Tunisia , or the new H2 Southern Corridor for the transport of hydrogen from North Africa to Central Europe via Italy.
5.5 BILLION EUROS TO THE MATTEI PLAN
As you can see, I wanted to talk about concrete projects and initiatives, capable of generating a significant and immediate impact in the countries in which they will be implemented and which will be able to expand not only in terms of size but also in terms of sectors of intervention. These are projects whose implementation and developments I intend to follow personally, for those not yet started our managers are ready to start immediately to define the operational part, but clearly this is only the start of the Plan because we aim to replicate the successful models in all African countries that will be affected.
But it is obvious that such an ambitious plan cannot ignore the full involvement of the entire "Italian system" as a whole, starting from Development Cooperation and the private sector which is essential to involve in our strategy, given the enormous wealth of knowledge, technology and innovative solutions that it can boast.
An intervention plan with which we want to give our contribution to freeing African energies, also to guarantee the young generations a right that has so far been denied, because here in Europe we have often spoken about the right to emigrate, but we have hardly spoken never about how to guarantee the right not to be forced to emigrate, and thus not have to cut off one's roots, in search of a better life that is increasingly difficult to achieve in Europe.
Mass illegal immigration will never be stopped, human traffickers will never be defeated, if the causes that push a person to abandon their home are not addressed upstream. This is exactly what we intend to do, on the one hand declaring war on the slavers of the Third Millennium and on the other working to offer African peoples an alternative made up of opportunities, work, training and legal migration paths.
The Mattei Plan also responds to this need and can count on an initial allocation of over 5.5 billion euros between credits, gift operations and guarantees, of which approximately 3 billion will be allocated by the Italian Climate Fund, and approximately two billion and a half from development cooperation resources. Of course it is not enough, which is why we want to involve the international financial institutions, the Multilateral Development Banks, the European Union and other donor states, which have already declared their willingness to support common projects. Just as we intend to create a new financial instrument within the year, together with Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, to facilitate private sector investments in the Mattei Plan projects.
In short, and I conclude, the Africa that we see is above all a continent that can and must amaze, but to do so it needs to be put to the test and be able to compete on equal terms in the global context.
As has been said since ancient times, “something new always arises from Africa”. Here, the hope I wish for each of us is that something new can truly arise from this Summit, something that no one expects, even something that many would not have believed possible, because denying the predictions as always is writing your own page in history.
Thank you.
THE FIVE PILLARS OF THE MATTEI PLAN FOR AFRICA
Education and training : the interventions aim to promote the training and updating of teachers, the adaptation of curricula, the launch of new professional and training courses in line with the needs of the labor market and collaboration with companies , involving in particular Italian operators and exploiting the Italian 'model' of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Agriculture : the interventions will be aimed at decreasing malnutrition rates; promote the development of agri-food supply chains; support the development of non-fossil biofuels. In this framework, the development of family farming, the protection of forestry heritage and the fight against and adaptation to climate change through integrated agriculture are considered fundamental.
Health : the interventions aim to strengthen health systems, improving the accessibility and quality of primary maternal and child services; to strengthen local capacities in terms of management, training and employment of healthcare personnel, research and digitalisation; develop strategies and systems for the prevention and containment of health threats, in particular pandemics and natural disasters.
Energy : the strategic objective is to make Italy an energy hub, a real bridge between Europe and Africa. The interventions will focus on the climate-energy connection and will aim to strengthen energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy, with actions aimed at accelerating the transition of electricity systems, in particular for electricity generation from renewable sources and transmission and distribution. The plan also envisages the on-site development of technologies applied to energy also through the establishment of innovation centers, where Italian companies will be able to select local start-ups and thus support employment and the valorisation of human capital.
Water : the interventions will concern the drilling of wells, powered by photovoltaic systems; maintenance of pre-existing water points; investments in distribution networks; and awareness-raising activities regarding the use of clean and drinkable water.
All these pillars are interconnected with interventions on infrastructure, both general and specific in each area.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/discorso-meloni-vertice-italia-africa/ on Mon, 29 Jan 2024 14:21:02 +0000.