Giorgia Meloni’s charm offensive in Africa

In the heart of Addis Ababa stands a new, $35mn museum built by the Chinese that commemorates Ethiopia’s victory over Italian colonial forces in an 1896 battle.

Yet, just up the road, a school plastered with posters of the medieval poet Dante is abuzz with new activity. It is part of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s €5.5bn “Mattei plan” to reset Rome’s relations with Africa — and curb irregular migration to Europe from across the Mediterranean.

Meloni’s right-wing government, which came to power vowing to stop unauthorised migration into Italy, has been fiercely criticised by human rights groups for hardball tactics, such as restricting humanitarian vessels that rescue migrants at risk of drowning and empowering notoriously brutal north African security forces to stop migrant boat departures.

Yet Meloni has said Rome also wants to tackle the underlying factors that drive people abroad, especially the lack of economic opportunities. Last year she launched the Mattei plan arguing that young Africans should have “the right not to have to migrate” to find a better life.

In a recent Financial Times interview, Meloni said Europe had erred in overlooking Africa’s strategic relevance and its economic potential given its vast tracts of arable land, rich mineral deposits and youthful population.

“Italy has its head in the middle of Europe and its foot in the Mediterranean, so it is a natural bridge between Europe, Africa and the Middle East,” she said. “I think it is strategic for Europe and the west, . . . Whatever happens in Africa, it will come to us.”

At a time when traditionally large aid providers such as the US and UK are cutting back, Italy is funding initiatives in 14 African countries through the Mattei plan. Projects range from €320mn in financing for the Lobito Corridor, which links copper mining regions in the Democratic Republic of Congo with a port in Angola, to small-scale investments in human capital development, which includes technical upskilling.

At the Italian school in Addis Ababa, for example, about two dozen youngsters are in the midst of a free, two-year course to prepare for jobs as skilled technicians either at home or potentially in Italy. In the latter companies face a worsening labour shortage as the population ages. It is a boon to participants such as Eyob Hailemichael, who hope the training will help him secure “a good income and a useful skill”.

While part of Meloni’s vision includes developing Africa as a hub of energy — including renewables — for Europe, she promised last year that Italy would shun “predatory temptations or paternalistic approaches”.

“We often make the mistake of lecturing others and considering ourselves better but that is not the right way to co-operate,” she told the FT. “There are some important opportunities that put together our interests and their interests.”

The push for influence in Africa comes as France — which Meloni criticised while in opposition for what she characterised as its condescending attitude to former colonies — suffers setbacks on the continent. French troops have been kicked out of military-ruled former colonies, including Niger and Mali, and in recent months have been asked to depart nominally friendly countries such as the Ivory Coast and Senegal.

In past interviews and public appearances, including a lively video from the Italian-French border in 2018, Meloni has repeatedly attacked France’s President Emmanuel Macron and the promotion of the Paris-backed CFA franc in several African countries as “exploitation and neocolonialism”.

Meloni is not the first Italian leader to see Africa as crucial for their own goals. In the late 19th century, newly unified Italy gradually began establishing control over Libya and Eritrea. In 1936, it formed the so-called Africa Orientale Italiana, also including Ethiopia and part of Somalia, in a shortlived but brutal colonial intrusion that ended with Benito Mussolini’s defeat in the second world war.

Outside the development co-operation of the Mattei plan, Meloni’s government continues cultivating relations with some of Africa’s most unsavoury regimes. Italy has been criticised for freeing a notorious Libyan warlord, who was sought by the International Criminal Court for the alleged murder, enslavement and rape of detainees in Libya.

Rome’s efforts to forge closer ties in the Sahel, the semi-arid land south of the Sahara once largely colonised by France, has also put it at odds with allies.

In Niger, where French troops were ousted following a 2023 coup against a pro-western president, Italy has remained willing to work with the regime, maintaining a military presence training Nigerien special forces alongside Turkish and Russian instructors.

Italy has also lobbied successfully for the EU to extend a police training mission in junta-ruled Mali, which was due to end in January.

Italians “want to do their own thing in the region”, said Bamako-based Ulf Laessing of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. “Their main concern is migration. They want good ties and are willing to sacrifice all other things like human rights and democratic reforms. This is realpolitik for them.”

Italy’s development initiatives have received some plaudits. “If there’s more and more Italian investment, if young men and women have more economic opportunities here, there would be less incentive for them to migrate,” said a senior Ethiopian official, arguing that Italians “have a better feel” for the Horn of Africa than other western nations.

Not everything is going smoothly, though. In Kenya, the World Bank and Italy developed a €210mn joint project — of which €75mn is from Rome — to get hundreds of thousands of farmers cultivating castor beans — the feed stock for biofuels — to supply Italian state oil company Eni. The Mattei plan is named after Eni’s founder, Enrico Mattei.

But an initial demonstration project in the Kenyan village of Mbegi led to small-scale farmers being up in arms after they said promised earnings of up to Ks70,000 ($540/€490) per acre failed to materialise.

Farmer Francis Kagiri said he earned just Ks140 in total, claiming he was given the wrong seeds and that, because he “harvested almost nothing”, he was forced to sell his cows to make ends meet.

Eni called the unhappy farmers “statistically unrepresentative” and said the project was progressing well.

But even if things are going to plan, some Italian diplomats working in Africa question how much success Rome can have with reducing migration flows from a continent with a population of 1.5bn, which is projected to grow to 2.5bn by 2050.

“This rhetoric works very well with her rightwing base but in reality there is no Mattei plan that can hold back immigration,” said one sceptical diplomat. “They don’t seem to understand the magnitude of Africa’s demographic boom.”