The Italian Mattei Plan: a New Strategic Platform for Partnership with Africa

What is the Mattei Plan and why the Meloni’s government is so interested in the African continent? What is different from the precedent Italian foreign policy initiatives in Africa? This research aimed to provide an in-depth analysis of the new Africa foreign policy implemented by Meloni's government and to delineate how the Plan represents a new platform for the Italian engagement in the African continent. Starting by outlining an overview of the post-World War II Italian foreign policy, essentially based on the idea of the three circles, Atlanticism, Europeanism, and Mediterraneanism, the analysis will go further to understand what the last governments have implemented for the African countries. Then the actors involved in the new foreign policy will be analyzed, understanding how the Sistema Italia is all involved: from the Italian Trade Agency, through the whole financial apparatus and the private sectors, to lastly the AICS, the development cooperation agency. The analysis then continues into the institutional events which have accompanied the course of the Mattei Plan: the two Italy-Africa Summit, the Summit in collaboration with the European Commission titled “The Mattei Plan for Africa and the Global Gateway: A common effort with the African Continent” and the participation of the President Meloni to the Assembly of the African Union. To conclude, a look at two important projects belonging to the Mattei Plan’s platform will be assessed, the Lobito Corridor and the ELMED, in order to concretely understand how the Plan is implemented and inlaid in the ongoing geopolitical issues.